★Important Records
KRMN
Working with the same source material, sound artists Maurizio Bianchi & Francisco Lopez create individual works produced from the impartial de-oxidation of sonorous carbon-containing modular compounds. "'KRMN-FL' and 'KRMN-MB' were both created with the same original source materials, jointly created by Maurizio Bianchi and Francisco Lopez.""Produced from the partial oxidation of carbon-containing compounds, carbon monoxide is a highly toxic gas and has no odor or color. It is the most common ty…
Jigokuhen
Jigokuhen is the final instalment in Masami Akita's 15 part Bird Series for Important Records. Inspired by Olivier Messaien's Catalogue D'Oiseaux, the Bird Series saw the release of one CD per month for 13 months while a 14th disc was released free via download to series subscribers and on CDr with the purchase of Merzbow's EcoBag. This 14th Bird Series release is being issued on the 2 year anniversary of the start of the Bird Series and in conjuntion with Vampilla's new album on Important …
Through Glass Panes
Ellen Fullman's first proper full length for Important Records follows her collaborative work with Barn Owl (imprec327) and a split LP with Eleh (imprec318). She was also featured on The Harmonic Series: A Collection Of Work In Just Intonation (imprec272).
In 1981 Ellen Fullman began developing the Long String Instrument, an installation of dozens of wires fifty feet or more in length, tuned in Just Intonation and ‘bowed’ with rosin coated fingers. Fullman has developed a unique notation system…
Totem 3
Not to be confused with the Master Musicians of Jajouka, MMOB are mischievous ethnographic music fakes from Seattle whose name actually derives from a Japanese pornographic pursuit. Stick with them, though, because against the odds, these miscreants' trilogy‑ending album is a seriously heady decoction of eastern mysticism hitched up to heavy droning jams. Despite the band's forbidding air, tracks such as "In the Twilight of Kali Yuga" reverberate with good cheer and "6000 Years of Darkne…
In V. Tro
A highly intriguing set of live recordings and "extreme aural mixes" capturing, for the first time, the disciplines of Larsen and Z'ev in collaboration. 'In V. Tro' was conceived as the soundtrack to a series of micro-cinematic images created between 1935 and 1985 at Bologna's Instituto di Anatomia Umana Normale (Basic Human Anatomy Institute) and assembled by professors Dario Cantino and Antonio Barasa. The images pay tribute to the maestro of anatomical discipline Giuseppe Levi, and there's a …
Cool Cruel Mouth
"Cool Cruel Mouth" is Larsen's 9th full length studio album and marks 15 years of activity with a fine collection of textural, cinematic, haunting, nocturnal songs. Written and recorded in 2010. "Cool Cruel Mouth" finds the band as a 5 piece with the full time addition of lyricist Little Annie "Anxiety" Bandez as the official voice of Larsen. Also featured on "Cool Cruel Mouth" is inimitable Baby Dee playing piano on one of the two featured instrumentals as well as on her own composition "Unhear…
Alchemic Heart
"Alchemic Heart is a special project presented by Vampillia who have colored these two colossal compositions with beautiful contributions by members of the Boredoms, Jarboe (ex-Swans), Inswarm and Japanese Noise-God Merzbow. Layered strings, piano, bass, noise and voices are weaved mysteriously and expand as two magnificently parallel aesthetic worlds. Comprised of two pieces, 'Sea'/'Land,' a primitive landscape is created via listening and destroyed when the pieces are complete. Vampilli…
Turntable History
Arnold Dreyblatt (b.1953) is an American composer who has studied with La Monte Young, Pauline Oliveros and Alvin Lucier. He is a member of the German Academy Of Art. He has released work on labels such as Table Of The Elements, Canteloupe, Tzadik, Hat Art and Dexter's Cigar.Turntable History is a recording of a 40 minute multi-channel sound composition which was concieved as part of an audio-visual installation installed in the circular vaulted brick space of a historical water container in Ber…
Progression
Featuring members of Pelican & X-Bax. For the new album three single-chord compositions were charted out, one freeform and tone driven, one long-form piece with charts dictating the players' intensity of performance, and one grid-like chart where each players' note continually shifts, though the combination of voices continue to maintain the chord. Six chords were chosen and arranged in a progression that encompasses two separate performances of each of the three compositions. Though the…
Split LP
Numbered edition of 500. Jackets letterpress printed at 43rd Parallel Letterpress. Split release between Ellen Fullman & Eleh. 'By examining the waveform produced by the Long String Instrument through a spectrum analyzer, I have observed that every overtone of the fundamental being played is represented nearly equally through the entire range of hearing. Just intonation, a tuning system based on pure ratios, lends itself to a consideration of not only precise tuning of fundamental frequencies, b…
13 Japanese Birds In A Bag
Shortly after ordering this 14 CD set; I read a newspaper article about the plight of the Eurasian cuckoo whose habitat is being gradually destroyed both in Britain and abroad. It is this type of threat to birdlife that inspired Japanese ‘noise music’ meister and long-time animal activist Masami Akita’s (aka Merzbow) 2009 album series, “13 Japanese Birds”. Now the entire set, plus a new CDR and piece of screen print art-work have been reissued as “13 Birds In A Bag”, with a navy blue eco-f…
Live
Magnificent reissue of this tape obscurity from 1980, Cluster's eighth album (the first of three live LPs) originally released on the YHR label (which was curated by Pump's David Elliott), also including archival material never before issued on CD. With so much stuff from this era coming to the surface recently it's sometimes easy to get blasé about it all, but this is one you really ought to give your fullest attention to. As the title says, this was recorded live in Vienna in 1980 at th…
Mirage
With Mirage on Important Records, Smegma again does the impossible. 38 years after reinventing the musical wheel, they have recorded a stunning masterpiece. With four of the original members working together again for the first time in many years, together with many new collaborators , they have kept alive their unique brand of old school primitive, Avant/Garage music. Running the gamut from the Musique Concrete inspired subtilely bombastic mood of the Title track.to World of my Own's frenzied n…
Live Conference
Recorded live last September in New York, this LP documents what might turn out to be Om's Don't Look Back concert, should they ever get the invite (actually, last May the band's Al Cisneros played one of those shows as part of his other band, Sleep). The stoner-doom classic Conference Of The Birds gets a full playthrough here, with Cisneros (on bass and vocals) partnered by drummer Emil Amos. Fans of the original will be pleased to find the recording fidelity and the…
The Visible Sign Of The Invisible Order
RESTOCKED Deluxe double LP set pressed at RTI with heavy duty tip on jackets from Stoughton. B side includes two bonus tracks not found on the original CD. Featuring contributions from Alan Bishop and Charles Gocher of the Sun City Girls. Graphic design by Stephen O'Malley. At last the long awaited reissue of a west coast outsider death cult classic! From the forests of the Northwest an uncharted document of shamanistic psychedelia. Recorded mostly during rituals deep in Cascadia and filtered th…
Totem 2
'Totem 2' is the latest album from No-Age supergroup Master Musicians Of Bukkake. This lineup of the band features members of Earth, Asda, Burning Witch, The Diminished Men and guests from Secret Chiefs 3 and the thriving Istanbul music scene. Production is handled by Randall Dunn, who is responsible for amazing albums by Six Organs of Admittance, Sunn 0))) and Earth, and the record was pressed at RTI for highest possible fidelity. It looks stunning too. "MMOB has now …
Simultaneous Quodlibet
Limited pressing of 500 copies on LP: Matmos, Wobbly & J Lesser present: Simultaneous Quodlibet. These pieces originated in improvised recordings which were then taken to Snowghost Studios in Montana & overdubbed with additional instruments, synths, drums, bass and organs. They were then edited down over the course of a few months until becoming a fully realised studio album of carefully constructed and meticulously composed pieces rooted in music that could only have been performed spontaneousl…
Being A Firefighter Isn\'t Just About Squirting Water
Ever since the days of Leonin and Perotin, people have been trying to pin down that special something that makes music so unique, with Andrew McKenzie of The Hafler Trio more ardent than most in his perusal. The lavishly packaged 5th instalment in this highly limited edition series of EP's, 'Being a Firefighter Isn't Just About Squirting Water' comprises a single 20 minute composition that is a dictionary definition of delicacy. Building upwards from spectral entities, …
Erroneous: A Selection Of Errors
Lovely collaborative project, result of the meeting of Italian cult band Larsen and Steven Stapleton’s ubiquitous creature Nurse With Wound. Almost 2 years of file swapping and occasional conceptual meetings led to a multi-headed collection of deformed sounds based on one long NWW piece and two Larsen tracks (that both bands have written specifically for this project) then deconstructed and rebuilt by each other into totally brand new opuses.Erroneous also features Neu! and Kraftwerk original me…
Guano Padano
Guano Padano, assembled by Alessandro Stefana, features guests Alessandro Alessandroni (renowned whistler of the immortal Ennio Morricone western soundtracks), Gary Lucas (Captain Beefheart/Jeff Buckley guitarist), Chris Speed (clarinet player with Tim Berne, Uri Caine, John Zorn etc.) and, last but not least, the legendary Italian singer Bobby Solo. Guano Padano's music is a kind of road movie, unfolding between the scorching asphalt of highway number 4 and the juicy smells of the peasan…