★Important Records
Overtone Ensemble
Tim Catlin formed the Overtone Ensemble in 2012 in order to perform works using his self-made "vibrissa" instruments. Each instrument consists of 12 vertically mounted aluminum rods that are longitudinally stroked by hand to produce ethereal singing tones. The long sustaining nature of the rods' sound and microtonal tunings allow players a sonic palette of complex textures and harmonic complexity. Other instruments used include massed hand-bells, quarter-tone bells, EBowed acoustic guitars, re-t…
New Songs Of The Humpback Whale
Packaged in a deluxe, heavy duty 6 panel digipak and insert containing an essay from David Rothenberg and Michael Deal designed whale song visualizations. What record album was so important that ten million copies of it needed to be pressed at once? You guessed it. Songs of the Humpback Whale. In 1979 National Geographic Magazine inserted a flexible "sound page" inside the back cover of all of its editions in twenty-five languages, and that is supposedly how many they printed. No human pop star …
Anoxia
LP version in combination offset/screenprinted jacket. Edition of 500. The second L A N D album, Anoxia, sees Daniel Lea return alone with an outing that marks a shift from the industrial-inflected jazz-noir of 2012's Night Within into distinctly new terrain. Mixed by Ben Frost at Greenhouse Studios, Reykjavík; mastered by Rashad Becker at D&M, Berlin. CD packaged in a combination offset/screenprinted jacket. "Anoxia" means "total absence of oxygen," and in Lea's hands the term heralds aural e…
Vice Versa, Etc.
2021 restock. "Includes liner notes & archival photographs. 1970 was an important year in Eliane Radigue's musical life since it was the year just before she acquired her ARP 2500 synthesizer. Since 1967, she had been using the feedback as a material; feedback from two tape recorders reworked through intensive studio techniques: slowing down, alteration, superimposition, montage. In 1970, the last year she dedicated to feedback, several milestone pieces saw the light of day: Omnht, a wonderful s…
Polarizer
Edition of 200 copies. Screen printed heavy duty white Polarizer jacket. Each record includes a signed/#'d screen print and blank, white, Polarizer cassettes. By purchasing Polarizer the buyer agrees not to reproduce any part of Polarizer digitally but unlimited analog duplication is allowed and white Polarizer cassette tapes are included to encourage duplication.
Eleh's Polarizer is a two part series focused on the instant reality of the analog world.
Mutei - Music for Davida Monk's Dream Pavilion
Since the mid-'90s, Seattle-based guitarist Bill Horist has been making music within and without convention in a wide variety of settings and genres and has worked with many notables in rock, experimental, and new music. He has played on dozens of records and has performed throughout North and Central America, Europe, and Japan, collaborating with numerous leading lights in a beguiling range of genres. He delivers an idiosyncratic and richly emotive take on the world's most ubiquitous instrument…
Issa
Issa is the debut release from Bristol-based musician and composer Kit Wilmans Fegradoe. The magic in Issa comes from Fegradoe's powerful exploration of emotion and sensitivity, which leads to a deeply personal and revealing listen. The work evokes the scale of Michael Stearns's compositions for film, whilst eliciting a minimalist undercurrent throughout. The album is sculpted from guided improvisation sessions in the studio with fellow musicians, traversing around the narrative of Issa, a …
Feel Free: Live At Cafe Oto
Beautiful ensemble performance of Duane Pitre's Feel Free including James Blackshaw on hammered dulcimer. LP pressed in an audiophile grade edition of 1000 copies.
Shortly after the release of Pitre's Feel Free, the composer set out for a 2012 solo tour in select European cities. To start off this tour he staged an ensemble performance of Feel Free, at London's renowned Cafe OTO. For his ensemble, Pitre chose to utilize only one veteran of a Feel Free performance (Jesse Sparhawk) and for th…
Blood/Lines
Blood Lines is Emily Jane White's first album for Important since 2009's Dark Undercoat. Featuring vocal contributions from Marissa Nadler. This American version of the CD contains two bonus tracks not available elsewhere.
After releasing three albums in three years, Emily Jane White wrote over 100 sketches between January 2011 and October 2012. Her new album "Blood / Lines" is a selected compilation of these songs. Recorded in a secluded studio in Sonoma County, California, the quiet envi…
Liebestod
Liebestod, by Polish composer Stefan Wesolowski, consists of repetitive compositions written for piano, brass instruments, strings, and electronics. The title itself is derived from Wagner's Tristan and Isolde, which says a lot about Wesolowski's primary inspirations. Liebestod shows a tremendous amount of respect for classical music but Wesolowski is far from making literal references to it. He shows his own unique musical language; rough and radical at some points, yet full of intense nos…
Jeff Burch
Jeff Burch's first solo full-length album is comprised of two expansive instrumental compositions anchored by beautiful old acoustic guitars and a modular synthesizer. He hoists his sounds up through the remnants of the 60's downtown drone spirit, through the fetid fruits of post-war central Europe and the scattered output of present-day suburban outsiders. The arrangements shift gracefully from floods of lush string texture to driving guitar and drum motif, from ebbs of brass and deep electric …
I Line My Days Along Your Weight
Brooklyn duo Mark Rogers and Mary Byrne recorded their debut, I Line My Days Along Your Weight, as a true duet: facing each other inches apart, intent upon listening. They wove together archaic instruments -- baritone acoustic, tricone resonator, golden-era flattop, space-age lap steel, upright piano, and hundred-year-old mandolin -- into a new and vibrant third voice. All the songs were recorded live to two-inch analog tape, the studio equivalent of tightrope-walking without a net. Mar…
Heat Source
Ashley Paul's Heat Source was recorded during a challenging year of transience between New York and London. During this year of impermanence Paul performed regularly and the effects of frequent performance and traveling can be heard in the intentionally pared back emptiness of Heat Source. making it an emotionally challenging and fascinatingly personal listening experience.Heat Source finds Ashley Paul working using her brilliant ears to find a zen like balance between her voice and a sp…
For Moussavi Atrium
For Moussavi Atrium is a brand new 38 minute piece from Eleh written for performance at the Cleveland Museum Of Contemporary Art (Cleveland MOCA) on September 28, 2013. " walks into a bar and asks for a pint of beer, the barman scowls at him and refuses. When pressed as to why, he says "I don't like your tone." Meanwhile a drunk in the corner tries to start a chant of "Eleh, give us a wave"...probably a sine it's time to leave.Yup, here's another tonal meditation from extreme minimal chappie…
Jo Ha Kyu
"Tradition belongs more to the present than the past. For three weeks Parisian cellist and composer Gaspar Claus met with traditional and modern Japanese musicians in a Tokyo studio to record Jo Ha Kyu. Performing with Claus on this piece are: Eiko Ishibashi (voice, piano, drums), Keiji Haino (voice), Kakushin Nishihara (voice, satsuma biwa), Ryuichi Sakamoto (piano), Hirochimi Sakamoto (electric cello), Sachiko M (sine wave), Otomo Yoshihide (turntable), Leonard Eto (wadaiko), Kazutoki Umezu (t…
Bridges
"Duane Pitre's Bridges, features two pieces taken from a suite of analogous compositions by the same name, and was composed by Pitre in 2012. The two pieces that comprise the album are meant to work together in sequence as a composite work; or they can be isolated and listened to on their own. The title derives its name from the original concept for this work, which was to bring together aspects of traditional Eastern music (such as compositional form and tuning) with Western musical trad…
Port Out Starboard Home
Some bands produce a CD every week; by now it seems 'normal' to have three year gaps in releasing records for Beequeen, which is a fresh antidote to the music business of more = more. For Beequeen, like good wine, things mature given more time. Whereas 'Sandancing' (2008) featured Olga Wallis a guest singer, on this new album she's a fully fledged bandmember, adding her beautiful voice to Beequeen's off beat songs. 'Port Out Starboard Home' features surreal dream-pop, but always with that unique…
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…
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…
Strings Of Consciousness & Angel
This is a collaboration between Angel (containing members of Mum and Pan Sonic) and Strings Of Consciousness. This dense and droney construction echoes platinum reflections with warm fluidity and delicate detail. The more attention you'll bestow on that record, the more unsuspected new paths you'll be invited to wander about. This is an intricacte and imaginative soundtrack with several layers of sound, gathering both organic and sonic elements to assemble a post-industrial sound structure. The …