★Beta-lactam Ring Records

An edition of 300 numbered copies and the first 50 copies will include an original piece of artwork from the 'hand' sessions and signed insert packaged in a custom made book bound gatefold sleeve. Also includes a bonus remix of 'Part One' by Scot Solida/Christus & the Cosmonaughts. “Cosmic Space Drone” lives up to its name, travelling into the deepest void, its gaping maw swallowing up meteoric dust and wayward celestial souls alike to fuel its endless journey into the infinite. Your jour…

Doomgaze. Is that a thing? In ancient times "Songs Of Flowers & Skin" might have done time on 4AD, Creation, or even Sarah. Except of course, for the slender demonic tail woven into the melodies, which would have left a smoldering pile of pointy shoes in its wake. Though the tracks here are not metal, there is no lacking of heavy. The songs (yes, songs) simmer to a point just below explosion. Aidan chooses to excavate with atmosphere in lieu of caterwauling electricity, filling the spaces…

There is a tribal element to Arc's 2 long suites that feel somewhat like being stoned in Cologne in 1971. The trios of Aidan Baker, Christopher Kukiel, and Richard Baker return to the quiet with hushed tribal timbres, however, these ambiences are riveting in a way that that other ambiences are not, probably because the group does not think with an ambient attitude. This is the sound of mining midnight. In a universe where experimentalism is often just a nice way of saying "boring," hearin…

The album title certainly does not deceive. But there is something absolutely worthy about Baker's approach to drone composition. He employs a subtle, patient counterpoint that offers an appealing spaciousness when played loud. The music is utterly enveloping, seemingly forcing the listener into a meditative state (Do not operate heavy equipment while listening, unless that heavy equipment is speakers or a spaceship). The compelling organic majesty of these 2 long tracks wafts deep oceani…

This is an unreleased album from 1975 of studio/live material! Dieu has smiled upon us, for a previously shelved early album (1975) by Ilitch finally has its jour in the soleil. Thierry Müller's strange musical arc is further enriched and confounded by this exploratory cosmic release. A brilliant mix of Krauty space groans and experimentalism (see also Conrad Schnitzler and Ash Ra Temple, etc) and the progressive electronics of Igor Wakhevitch. There is some psych in the folds, and the albu…

All new Ilitch studio recording! An horrific grandchild springs from the magma: Ilitch'll itch your progadelic scratch with its well manicured talons of fire. This Ilitchian renaissance zigs deep space experimental and zags full metal Zuehl. Electronics chirp and howl like the opening coda of Susperia, then explode into Weidorje intensity fuzz violence, cheered on by a pecussive force that sounds like Mussolini being kicked to death. The shifting interplay between total rockers and extrat…

To be issued mid Oct. 2010 as a double CD set housed in a custom made gatefold case with artwork by Jesse Peper. It started with a dusty box of DAT tapes. Perhaps it was years since anyone had listened to them despite the tantalising labels,"Paris #1", "Paris #2","Paris #3”... Indeed it was Paris where the Dots played their first residency in 1992. However , these tapes were a document of the Dots' one and only 3-nighter from the 10th to the 12th of March 1994 at the delightful Theatre Passage d…

Aidan Baker's anodyne ambiences almost act as aural dream machines on their own. But now Baker has collaborated with actual film makers for his Opus Dei, embodied in this double DVD set (one credited as Aidan Baker and the other to Nadja). Clocking in at nearly 6 hours, this in-home installation is the ultimate video aquarium for the acid-minded. Baker's thrum-scapes lay back and patiently coo mantras something akin to mid-period Nocturnal Emissions or Vidna Obmana, while spectacular visions wen…

Limited ed. of 400 copies with a bonus album of music packaged in a custom designed full color gatefold case with a mounted 12 page booklet of bonus artwork.  What if the Voyager space craft became sentient? Would it destroy humanity? Who is to say it wouldn’t become the most far-out musician of the galaxy? Expo ‘70’s sonic reach seems to extend past even the concept of space/time itself. One Eno Eon past normal, the patter of Expo ‘70’s dark matter squeaks and moans in wave forms, like the Dopp…

An edition of 300 copies on 180 gram blue vinyl and packaged in a custom made book bound sleeve. Available late August 2009 (delayed from original release date due to nefarious pressing plant.) 'Anal Aura Gram' is a vinyl version of the long deleted CDR that came in limited quantities with the 2003 album 'Aural Anagram' and also features a bonus 7' disc of two remixes by Steven Severin (Siouxsie & The Banshees, The Glove). How many lives would be saved if every one had an Anal Aura Gram? Andrew …

A split album with Volcano the Bear and La STPO. VTB tracks 1-5 and STPO tracks 6-9. Bears and Birds, oh my! One side keeps the hot hot. And the other keeps the weird weird. VTB’s typically atypical entomological set scratches like a hive that has evolved just to the point of thumping out tribal fealties to its giant insect God-Thing. Environmentally ritualized sub-rhythms mix musique-concrete with actual concrete, forming freakishly minimal foundations for the hive of whatevers to swarm within.…

Packaged in a full color custom made book bound 10 panel sleeve. A double vinyl version, "Chalchiuhtlicue" will also be issued with three mixes by Nadja and one mix by Edward Ka-Spel from the 2xCD version. That's right kids! Yes you can mix your own Nadja album! “Night and day, you are the one. Only you beneath the moon or under the Jaguar Sun…” Now you’re messing with a sun of a bitch. Let’s count backwards. The second disc in this set “Quetzalcoatl” diffuses into the air an alien vocabulary of…

“Belles Betes” features 4 new tracks fuzzed-out heaviness. The track ‘Green & Cold’ is currently streamable from Nadja’s MySpace page, and it sounds awesome - dark and brooding yet subtly melodic. Like most Nadja releases, “Belles Betes” is annoyingly limited. It’s being released as an LP and will be limited to 500 copies. Click the Beta-lactam link below for samples from each track and additional album info.

The LSD March hare hops its winding way through another Wonderland of its own making with a brand new kraut influenced album "Uretakumo Nakunarutorika". These ever indefinable Japanese psych monsters have coughed up a syrup-soaked album of broken tribal psychedelia. Their distended view of plunderphonic percussion gurgles like a drum'n'base-jump into a vat of psilocybin wine. And then things get weird.

2xCD housed in a full color custom made book bound sleeve and printed inner sleeve. Chemical Playschool Volumes 8 and 9 documents the largely unseen universe of The Legendary Pink Dots between the years 1990 and 1995. History has been amended where necessary. The cast for this voyage: The Silverman, Niels Van Hoornblower, Edward Ka-Spel, Martijn de Kleer, Father Pastorius, Cevin Key, Elke Skelter, Raymond Steeg, Ryan Moore, Maria, a brass band and Calyxx.

The expanded / re-issued version of "Summer Salt & Subway Sun" Ltd. edition of 400 in beautiful box with bonus-album "Wildcat Fights." The first 400 copies are packaged in a deluxe full color book bound box, 16 page lyric booklet , full color book bound cd cases and the bonus album "Wildcat Fights". Eyeless are an earful. Messrs Bates et Becker have miraculously come trembling through the decades musically unscathed. And yay though it is within the office of many bands to have precedents in…

An edition of 500 numbered copies. Thank Expo ‘70, O Lord, for the drones you are about to receive. A deep quivering of transcendental electronic mantras pulsates to the patient beat of the third Bardo. Slow, shape-shifting ambiences expand like groaning baritone crystals crawling out from sub-oceanic ooze. Psix pstring psychedelic pspews bisect the curve of extraterrestrial buzz with a surprising terrestrial fluidity until bioluminescent fish gather to choke out quiet hymns around the th…

A kind of different album from A. Baker (Nadja) as it leans more into shoegazery and drone-pop songs. “Green & Cold” is the strength of strings proved by A. Baker. His soft lyrics suffuse weightlessly into a humming cloud of perfumed guitar scour. Yes, when gazed upon, these patent leather shoes really do reflect up. However, “G&C” is accomplishes much more than throwing Loveless lights back up to Heaven. An ass-load or so of previous avant-garde releases has developed in Baker a skill-se…

 A new landscape is painted out of darkness by progressive strokes of the dawn. The finished piece is neither night nor day, but the transformation itself. Aidan Baker's (Nadja) "Book Of Nods" crests experimental peaks in similarly paced sonic transmigrations. His lustrous chimera blooms open in shifting onion layers built out of slow-moaning guitar, flute, organ and drums. The resonant frequencies of quietly crashing nodes vibrate the ozone with a sub-textural beating of multi-pianic fea…

This year sees the eruption of the Volcano with a myriad of releases leaving the town folk covered in a fine and mysterious silt of musical entropy. The limited release of "Mountains" finds our boy’s spelunking the creepiest of dream spawned caves, excavating crystalline fragments along the way, which are then set in beautiful mental jewelry appropriate for any formal occasion. Arpeggiated blurs and disinterred voices snap, crackle and pop as an unnamed rusted hulk is slowly pushed across an eve…

A long-lost classic of the Terry Rilesque (!) music and experimental world fusion. French saxophonist Ariel Kalma is one of the pioneers of early experimental electronic music; born and raised in Paris and studying recorder and saxophone from an early age, Kalma became interested in other musical traditions during his international travels in the early '70s, even going so far as to study circular breathing techniques from an Indian snake-charmer. His debut album, originally recorded in 1975 and …

STANDARD EDITION (220 page hard bound book with full color dust jacket, the album 'Zero Mix'). Hardbound book featuring paintings created to celebrate the release of the albums 'Angry Eelectric Finger'. The book also contains the album 'Zero Mix' packaged in a book bound cd case. Released in an edition of 1500 copies featuring full color images and a matte and gloss spot coating, plus full color dust jacket. Thou had best be ready when the angry eelectric finger points to YOU! THUS SPAKE nurse (…

Steven Stapleton's project, Nurse With Wound, harked back to the satirical and iconoclastic experiments of Dadaism and Futurism. His early, formative works (frequently shared with David Tibet of Current 93), such as Homotopy To Marie (1982) and Sylvie And Babs (1985), were similar in spirit to the Fugs' Virgin Forest, to Frank Zappa's breakneck operettas and to the Residents' multiform suites. His art of the collage turned decidedly cacophonous with works such as the EPs Gyllenskold (1984) and B…

O'Rourke's version of Nurse With Wound's source material keeps very close to the spirit of a Nurse With Wound album. This is partly due to the common reference points both artists share, but partly because it seems that he has used much of the raw material provided by Stapleton and Potter without changing it at all. Nurse With Wound and O'Rourke are two of the few artists who can sustain interest while essentially presenting an entire LP side of creaking sounds set against doom laden ambient sou…

Original material by Nurse With Wound. Recorded 2001-2003. Dismantled, raped and set fire to by Cyclobe (Ossian Brown and Stephen Thrower). Hurdy Gurdy by Cliff Stapleton. Bells performed and recorded by Ossian Brown and Thighpaulsandra in St. John's Church, Gdanska, Poland. Flute and sax by Hansi Fischer and Tim Belbe of Xhol Caravan. Completed material mastered by Cyclobe at Strange Hotel. Apocalyptic guitar by David Tibet. Original material mastered by Denis Blackham. Cover paintings by Babs …

Ed. of 300 numbered copies. 'Welcome to the machina. Anla Courtis and RLW skillfully dowse noisome spirits from their stony crags and carve a kind of power electronics opera in so doing. The stunning opening piece is birthed from a complete silence, out of which a shuffling hiss and a wailing drone very, very slowly rise up to a swarming crescendo, only to settle carefully back into the stoic rocky mists. This serves almost as an overture, where the textures and dynamics of the whole are suggest…

Martyn Bates' elusive work as Migraine Inducers issued before his involvement with Eyeless in Gaza finally gets released on CD. Originally circulated on cassette in a tiny quantity as Dissonance/Antagonistic Music in 1979, it later saw a marginally wider release in the United States in somewhat abbreviated form. The complete version of this legendary album is included here, as is a second disc recorded in 1994 with Gaza partner Peter Becker to complete the work.

To say that Beta-lactam Ring records has released another typical Volcano the Bear album is to address only the initiated. Yet, it is meant to be a compliment. how best to describe the thrilling mixture of sounds, atmospheres and environments on offer? Those that have heard the group’s half dozen albums, and myriad other releases, have already embraced the unpredictability that remains this British aggrigate’s trademark. This newest offering is distilled, boiling elements from their previous dou…

Edition of 350 numbered and signed copies packaged in deluxe gatefold sleeves. A CD edition of what every DANIEL MENCHE fan considers his finest work to date. Remastered and expanded with a bonus album Sunder, a follow up to Deluge. Deluge & Sunder is actually a surprising departure from previous explorations by Mr. Menche as the tones are generated by real live instruments (bass guitar, accordion, piano and melodica) as played by a real live Menche. The rumbly counterpoint that so well defines …

From out of the Great Republic of Texas, and a new side project from Tom Carter (Charalambides) and Brian Smith (Iron Kite) rises a lone star called Friday Group. In a seemingly appropriate gesture, the opening scherzo of droney solo guitar twang blows dusty debris across the speakers, as if a small sand storm in a remote part of Amarillo. With wind wrestling loose gutters and flat chimes, the first movement is almost a weird paean to Ry Cooder's desolate Paris Texas score. Axe attacks ho…

Cacophony plus catastrophe divided by calliope minus colostomy=crepe-noizette! Sound sound off like a delicious blend of fresh When and finely ground Aphex Twin mixed with just a dash of Pascal Comelade drool.13 tracks of dark dementia sewn together as a quilt of mini symphonic diversions, embroidered with bits and bytes and twisted sub rhythms and the occasional driving breakbeat. Whimsical and dada-esque with solid musical foundations, this record can also stand as rightful heir to the likes o…

Limited edition hand-numbered split 10" with the odd pairing of minimalism master Tony Conrad with the wonderful Legendary Pink Dots' Edward Ka-Spel. Complete with all inserts.

Here's a rose plucked from the magnetic garden. Rick Reed's solo project from 1985. Entitled "Music For The Rothko Chapel" . Reed has long had a fascination for the chapel, located in Houston, Texas, which contains some of the last large scale paintings by the late abstract expressionist painter Mark Rothko. Almost completely monochromatic, in deep shades of purple and near black, the paintings seem to want to pull the viewer into it's mysterious world of the void. Reed wanted to create not so m…

Negative Entropy is a new collaboration between two well established sound artists Michael Prime & Geert Feytons. Michael Prime has a well established solo recording career with many solo releases, but has also worked with Organum, Jim O'Rourke & Morphogenesis. Geert Feytons has been involved with his own project Noise-maker's Fifes for about 15 years now with many releases to credit including sound works for theatrical & ballet pieces in Belgium, France & Italy. 'City Open to the Nomad' present…