★Klanggalerie
Exterior Lux
Jac Berrocal is a 1946-born musician (trumpet player), poet and sometime film actor who came of age in the ‘70s Paris improv scene, where the boundaries between music, art and theatre were porous and begging to be breached. Inspired by bebop, chanson, free jazz, beat poetry, early rock ‘n roll and myriad Eastern influences, and with an iconoclastic, anything-goes approach to instrumentation and technique that would later align him with post-punk sensibilities, Berrocal blazed an eccentric and un…
Songs From the Rain Palace
Blaine L. Reininger needs no special introduction. He is an American post-punk, new-wave and alternative pop singer, songwriter, musician, multi-instrumentalist (particularly violin), writer and performer. He is known for being a member of the group Tuxedomoon since 1977 after co-founding it with Steven Brown and, latterly, for a notable music and theatre career, both as a soloist and contributor to other artists' recordings, including The Durutti Column, Snakefinger, Anna Domino, Savage Republi…
A Safe Substitute
Storm Bugs are an English post punk band formed in 1978 in Deptford, London, by Philip Sanderson and Steven Ball who had met in the Medway Towns, England. The band have been linked to a number of genres including: cassette culture, industrial music and DIY. Storm Bugs were initially active between 1978 and 1982 and reformed in 2001. Sanderson had experimented with tape recorders whilst still at school, after moving to London in 1978 he began to get out of hours access to the electronic music stu…
It Doesn't Matter Where It's Solstice When You're in the Room
Martyn Bates is an English singer, musician and songwriter. After releasing tapes of experimental, industrial music as Migraine Inducers he formed Eyeless In Gaza with Peter Becker in January 1980. The duo became known for their unconventional instrumentation and arrangements, and for Bates’s passionate vocals. From 1992 onwards, Bates has run a parallel career recording and performing with a re-vitalised Eyeless In Gaza – with Eyeless deftly blending song with collaged soundscaping - while Bate…
Oddities 2013-2015
Hardy Fox was the primary composer of The Residents. He created an incredible body of work, using all kinds of names other than The Residents, amongst them Combo De Mechanico, Sonidas De La Noche, Dead Eye Dick, Charles Bobuck or Black Tar And The Cry Babies. The Tar projects were generally created to help raise money for needy projects for poverty, mass destruction in fire, and to fight the evil of Trump uprising. Before Hardy died, he sent us several albums to be released after his passing. On…
Duophonic Landscape
Elisabeth Harnik, an Austrian based pianist and composer has created a multi-faceted body of work by blurring genre boundaries through various collaborations in the field of improvised music, interdisciplinary projects and contemporary compositional works. She studied classical piano and later -- with Beat Furrer -- composition at the University of Music and Performing Arts, Graz. As an improviser she works within an electro-acoustic inspired sound-world, using specific preparations and extended…
French Gigs
George Lowen Coxhill, generally known as Lol Coxhill, was an English free improvising saxophonist and raconteur. He played the soprano or sopranino saxophone. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, he was a member of Canterbury scene bands Carol Grimes and Delivery and then Kevin Ayers and the Whole World. He became known for his solo playing and for work in duets with pianist Steve Miller and guitarist G. F. Fitzgerald. Coxhill collaborated with other musicians including Mike Oldfield, Morgan Fishe…
Beautiful Eyes
The Residents are an American art collective best known for their over 60 studio albums that were recorded over a period of over forty years. They also created some outstanding multimedia works, mainly three CD projects and ten DVDs. Working as an anonymous collective, their identities were kept secret until in 2017 Hardy Fox revealed himself as their primary composer. Hardy died in October 2018, but the group continue to record and perform. Recently, several new albums have been released, among…
Hope
Bourbonese Qualk were an experimental music group from England who where active from 1979 until 2003. The group were always obsessively and uncompromisingly focused on controlling their work – they ran their own record label, recording studio, tour organisation and music venue (the legendary ‘Ambulance Station’) – they refused to integrate into the commercial music racket turning down publishing deals from major labels – stubbornly opting for total independence.
Bourbonese Qualk were also known …
Ice Exposure
Jac Berrocal is a 1946-born musician (trumpet player), poet and sometime film actor who came of age in the ‘70s Paris improv scene, where the boundaries between music, art and theatre were porous and begging to be breached. Inspired by bebop, chanson, free jazz, beat poetry, early rock ‘n roll and myriad Eastern influences, and with an iconoclastic, anything-goes approach to instrumentation and technique that would later align him with post-punk sensibilities, Berrocal blazed an eccentric and un…
Different Voices For You. Different Colours For Me.
Robert Rental was a British pioneer of the post-punk DIY industrial electronic music scene in the United Kingdom. Originally from Port Glasgow, Scotland, he moved to the south of England with Thomas Leer in the late 1970s, and became involved with the local music scene. Robert Rental however released very little of his solo music, preferring to collaborate with Thomas Leer, as well as with Daniel Miller.
The only solo recording from The 1970s is the 7" single "Paralysis" first released on the ho…
Summing
Oscar Jan Hoogland is the sound of Amsterdam in person. He plays in the Muziekgebouw (Amsterdams main hall for modern composed music) as well as in the Bimhuis (Holland’s main jazz venue) that is literally attached to it, as in its parking garage. He is an instant composer, pianist and inventor of his own instrument by putting a clavichord, a keyboard instrument from the 17th century, on 220 Volt electricity.
As the last student of the late pianist, composer and improvisor Misha Mengelberg he te…
Eric Random & Free Agents
The Free Agents was originally a side-project of The Tiller Boys. These were a Manchester group active from 1978 to 1979. They supported Joy Division on a few occasions. They recorded a single for Factory, which the label did not release in the end. Later, the single was released on New Hormones after the group disbanded. The Boys consisted of Eric Random, Francis Cookson and Pete Shelley.
When Free Agents was founded, an LP was released entitled £3.33 in 1980 on Groovy Records. This album later…
An Abandoned Laboratory Vol. III
Edward Ka-Spel is an English singer/songwriter and musician residing in Nijmegen, The Netherlands. He is best known for his work with the band The Legendary Pink Dots, which he co-founded. He is also known for his work on The Tear Garden with Skinny Puppy's cEvin Key. In 2017, he collaborated with Amanda Palmer on the album I Can Spin a Rainbow.
In The Dots, he was initially known as D'Archangel, Prophet Q'Sepel and he used other pseudonyms as well. He has also released numerous solo albums (ini…
Kleine Krieg
The Legendary Pink Dots are an Anglo-Dutch experimental rock band formed in London in August 1980. In 1984 the band moved to Amsterdam, playing with rotating musicians and having, as core members, singer/songwriter/keyboardist Edward Ka-Spel and keyboardist Phil Knight aka The Silverman. The band was originally called "One Day..." but subsequently changed the name to The Legendary Pink Dots, apparently inspired by pink dots on certain keys of the band's main recording studio piano. In the 1980s …
Yes Yes No No Yes No Yes
Officer! was founded by Londoner Mick Hobbs. His roots were in the Rock In Opposition scene of the late 70s and early 80s. Initially he worked as guitarist in The Work, subsequently he became closely associated with This Heat and their Cold Storage Studio in Brixton, working with artists like FamilyFodder, Catherine Jauniaux or Zeena Parkins.
The band's first album "8 New Songs By Mick Hobbs" came out in 1982 on casette only. It was followed by the second album, "Ossification". The third album, …
S.O.T.A.
*Limited edition of 100 hand-numbered copies, issued in a digipack.* Non Toxique Lost are one of the most important and equally most underrated bands from Berlin's 1980s Industrlal scene. Sprung aus den Wolken, Einstürzende Neubauten, Die Tödliche Doris and also Non Toxique Lost were the core of the movement in the divided city. In the old days, most of their albums came out on cassette only, later they were collected onto vinyls and CDs.
After the tragic loss of long-time member Steffen Schütze…
Duette (Live In Vienna)
Section 25 formed in Blackpool,UK in November 1977. Initially they were a duo, consisting of brothers Larry Cassidy and Vincent Cassidy. In June 1978 they made their live debut with Phil Denton on guitar. Their first 7", "Girls Don't Count", was released in July 1980 on Factory Records, produced by Ian Curtis and Rob Gretton of Joy Division fame.
Joined by percussionist Lee Shallcross, Section 25 gradually evolved with a more electronic-dance direction from 1983 onwards, a process which culminat…
Khamu (She Sleep Walks)
Second installment in a reissue programme for this excellent UK band. C Cat Trance were formed by multi instrumentalist John Rees Lewis after his departure from Medium Medium, taking the band's drummer Nigel Kingston Stone with him. The band are seen as members of the post-punk movement, but that's not all that is to say about their sound.
C Cat Trance incorporated ethnic music into their compositions before world music became a popular genre. Their influences come mainly from Northern Africa an…
Semantics
Semantics was a jazz supergroup consisting of Elliott Sharp, Ned Rothenberg and Samm Bennett.
Elliott Sharp, born in Ohio in 1951, began playing the piano at the age of six and started to perform concerts two years later. He soon gave up the piano, first in favour of the clarinet and later for the guitar. Sharp became intrigued with all types of experimental music, from contemporary classical to free jazz and sophisticated rock. He studied anthropology at Cornell University, where he played in a…