★EM Records
Grade A Guy
*2025 stock* Sonthaya Kalasin was the male lead singer in in the molam section of legendary producer/impresario Surin Phaksiri's beloved musical troupe Thidso Lam Phloen; his female counterpart was Phairin Phonphibun (EM1147CD/LP). These recordings, the very best of Kalasin's work with Phaksiri, cover the period from the mid-70s to the early 80s and showcase Kalasin's mastery of the traditional male molam lower vocal range. Also highlighted here are Phaksiri's production skills and his penchant …
Cybernetic Defiance and Orgasm 2: Other Sides of Henry Kawahara
This anthology is the second compilation from EM Records of the works of the late Henry Kawahara, a media artist and electronic music producer who was particularly active in the Japanese cyber-occult underground of the 1990s, a scene linked with technologies such as 3D (binaural) recordings, brain machines, sound chairs, computer graphics and compact discs. These tracks, produced 1990-95, include a series of recordings described as "Parallel Data Sounds" and "Sound LSD", a "new language system t…
Bird Cage: Birdfriend Archives
Enter a world unknown! Birdfriend is a cassette label run by Japanese musician/composer Koshiro Hino, aka YPY, who is also a founding member of the Osaka band goat. This compilation, available on CD and double vinyl, features 18 tracks by Japanese artists, from 2013-2017, previously available only on hard-to-find cassettes on the Birdfriend label, now available to you, the curious and courageous listener, worldwide on EM Records. Rejoice and enjoy the fractured rhythms and future-now timbres, qu…
Appearance/Music for Solo Performer
Big tip! Beyond Rare! These historical recordings of a 1967 concert at Hope College in Michigan involving John Cage, Toshi Ichiyanagi and David Tudor, performing compositions by Ichiyanagi and Alvin Lucier, were recently discovered in an archive in Japan. The Lucier piece, "Music for Solo Performer", was the first musical composition to utilize human brainwaves; this 1967 performance, released here for the first time, is an early realization of the piece, featuring Tudor, Ichiyanagi and Lowell C…
Cybernetic Defiance and Orgasm
This anthology is the second compilation from EM Records of the works of the late Henry Kawahara, a media artist and electronic music producer who was particularly active in the Japanese cyber-occult underground of the 1990s, a scene linked with technologies such as 3D (binaural) recordings, brain machines, sound chairs, computer graphics and compact discs.
These tracks, produced 1990-95, include a series of recordings described as "Parallel Data Sounds" and "Sound LSD", a "new language system t…
Bump Lam Phloen: Essential Hongthong Dao-udon
How can we explain the power of music? How can songs delivered in a language which we don't understand move us so? This collection contains the very best songs from Hongthong Dao-udon, one of the great Thai singers of the "third generation" of Molam singers, one of the artists who succeeded in fusing Molam with Luk Thung, thus triggering a new generation of singers; in fact she was the first to sing both genres from the beginning of her career, considering herself to be situated happily between …
Off the wall
The long-awaited and reissue of Wada's 1985 LP "Off The Wall", recorded in Berlin and originally released on the esteemed FMP label. A minimalist yet majestic monsterpiece ("massive", as Tom Johnson declares in his perceptive liner notes), "Off The Wall" features Wada and Wayne Hankin on bagpipes, Marilyn Bogerd on adapted organ, and percussionist Andreas Schmidt-Neri.
The original album consisted of two side-long pieces recorded on successive days by Jost Geber, who captured the power and dynam…
Earth Horns With Electronic Drone
Yoshi Wada and EM Records presents the first-ever, world-premiere release of Earth Horns With Electronic Drone, recorded live in 1974. Combining four of Wada's self-made "pipehorns" (made from plumbing materials, over three meters in length), with an electronic drone tuned to the electrical current of the performance space, this is a lost masterpiece of early minimalism, placing Wada rightfully in the pantheon with La Monte Young, Phill Niblock, Maryanne Amacher and Alvin Lucier. Recorded live i…
Singing in Unison
"Singing in Unison" is the final in a series of recordings from acclaimed sound artist, composer and performer Yoshi Wada. Recorded live over two nights, March 14 and 15, in 1978, at New York City's legendary performance space The Kitchen, "Singing in Unison" is a dramatic yet meditative work: modal improvisations for three male voices, singing, with great gravitas, in purposeful unison.
These previously unreleased recordings, featuring vocalists Richard Hayman (aka R.I.P Hayman), Imani Smith an…
Never Forget Me
Never Forget Me is the second release on EM Records from Angkanang Kunchai, one of the greatest Thai singers; the original 1979 vinyl release, now extremely rare, was a collection of her self-produced songs, backed by her own band. This radically independent stance, though admirable, caused the album to languish in relative obscurity, due to her lack of support from the business masters of the Thai music scene of the time. "Never Forget Me" is a plea to her fans, and although the original album …
Clan Caimán
The music of Clan Caimán is primitive and hypnotic. It is located in the pre-rock era and from there, it proposes a different evolution path for music from the 1950s to present day. Like a different musical development in a parallel timeline. Gamelan, Hawaiian music, surf, exotica, rainforest or aquatic; these elements make up the palette which constructs a mystic and profound music that seeks ancestral connection.
Formed in 2016 by musician, composer and producer Emilio Haro looking to create m…
Angkhanang Khunchai & The Ubon Phatthana Band
Born in the province of Ubon Ratchathani in Isan (the northeastern region of Thailand), Angkhanang Khunchai was a young female prodigy who emerged on the molam scene, and became one of the first generation of molam performers who were able to "sing" popular music. From an early age she was mentored by renowned national molam artist Chawiwan Damnoen, and in her mid-teens joined the legendary musical troupe the Ubon Phatthana Band as the lead vocalist.
In 1971 at the age of 16 she released a singl…
The Essential Doi Inthanon : Classic Isan Pops From The 70s - 80s
A revered figure in his native Isan region, and indeed throughout Thailand, Doi Inthanon is a legendary composer, producer, visionary and talent-spotter, a man who combines business acumen with an unerring ability to both predict and engender new directions in Thai popular music. Fittingly naming himself after the tallest mountain in the nation, he has towered over Thai music since the early 70s, and is still active today. This compilation, the first "various artists" collection in the EM Record…
Man on a Water Buffalo
For reasons unknowable, certain places in certain eras become hotbeds of music, fertile in their growth and flowering of musical talent. Thailand in the 1970s was such a place, and Dao Bandon is one of the enduring greats of that era. Born in the farm country of the Isan region, Bandon came from a poor family and was a monk during his teens, two great influences which shaped him, with his farm roots grounding the earthy heart of his lyrics, and his years of monastic chanting lending a unique res…
Reggae Is Here Once Again
Ultra-positive consciousness from Afro-Caribbean London, circa 1979. Members of the legendary 20th Century Steel Band (one of Grand Master Flash's favourites) sailing Trinidad-wise over gratifyingly intricate African ritual rhythms. Strong vocals compliment reggae, funk, disco and soul influences to form a relentless groove machine.
Steel an' Skin, a unit composed of young nightclub musicians born in Ghana, Nigeria, St. Kitts, Trinidad and the U.K., who once performed with Ginger Johnson's Afrik…
Lam Phaen Motorsai Tham Saep: The Best of Lam Phaen Sister No. 1
2025 stock The best of Khwanta Fasawang, the heart and soulful Sister No. 1 of 1980s Lam Phaen, queen of the cassette era. She was chosen, from over a thousand demo tapes, by legendary producer and songwriter Doi Inthanon, who wanted to create a new, streetwise dance style of molam(*) music. The Lam Phaen genre was the result, and Khwanta Fasawang was the singer he chose to be its representative. Combining earlier musical trajectories with electronic elements and lyrics dealing with drinking and…
Bump Lam Phloen: Essential Hongthong Dao-udon
2025 stock How can we explain the power of music? How can songs delivered in a language which we don't understand move us so? This collection contains the very best songs from Hongthong Dao-udon, one of the great Thai singers of the "third generation" of Molam singers, one of the artists who succeeded in fusing Molam with Luk Thung, thus triggering a new generation of singers; in fact she was the first to sing both genres from the beginning of her career, considering herself to be situated happi…
A Fraying Space
2025 stock Imagine being a punk rocker before there were any others, or a hippie whose message of peace was infused with a sardonic whimsy. That’s what it must have been like to be Pip Proud, in Sydney in the late 1960s, railing against the media and its hypocrisies, making a music that cut through all lies. — David Nichols Pip Proud, sui generis, could be considered an Australian outsider, with his untutored and uninhibited singing style, his primal guitar playing, his resolutely personal visio…
8 Automated Works
EM Records is proud to present 8 Automated Works, the first full release by Componium Ensemble, an "indeterminate chamber music" ensemble helmed by Spencer Doran of Visible Cloaks. The project is inspired by the long history of automated musical instruments, beginning with the ancient Greek Archimedes and further developed by the Banū Mūsā brothers in 9th century Baghdad, who "first perfected the concept of a programmable, automated musician: a mechanically controlled flute which used hydraulic …
Hyperrealist Music, 2011-2015
"Hyperrealist Music, 2011-2015" is a selection of late masterpieces by Noah Creshevsky, a proponent of "Hyperreal Music," which opened a new door to cyber-human music.