★Northern-Spy
Travel
Tip! Travel, the 19th studio album by Australian improvisational trio The Necks, documents their recent practice of starting each day in the studio with a 20-minute trio improvisation. The recordings offer some of their most ecstatic and captivating music cut to tape. As bassist Lloyd Swanton puts it: “It’s a really nice communal activity to bring us together in focus each day, and some lovely music has resulted from it.” Although a straight “live” improvisation has never been recorded in the st…
The Weather Up There
Chicago drummer and composer Jeremy Cunningham wrote The Weather Up There in response to the loss of his brother Andrew, who died in a home invasion robbery in 2008. Co-produced by Jeff Parker and Paul Bryan, and engineered by Paul Bryan and John McEntire, this new work confronts the tragedy of violence and examines the acute ripple effect on several people's lives through the lens of memory, response, and collage. Further deepening the textural and emotive impact, Cunningham formed a “drum choi…
The Only Way To Go Is Straight Through
On this Record Store Day exclusive release, entitled The Only Way To Go Is Straight Through, Thurston Moore and Loren Connors fearlessly dive into a hot, dark pool and enter a world of surging sound and faint lights. They can’t see each other. They can only hear each other’s searing notes in the heat. But it is enough to take them through.
The material on The Only Way To Go Is Straight Through was compiled from two live recordings. Side A was captured at The Stone in Manhattan, where Moore and C…
Metabolism: A Salute To The Energy Of The Sun
* 150 Gram Pink Vinyl* There’s a hole in our hearts where Captain Beefheart once loomed. Allow Bird Names to fill it. Whatever it is we need to fill our post-Beefheart aortic vacancy, Bird Names shall deliver."-- Impose Magazine
What's Your Sign?
Four years after their inaugural union at Ecstatic Music Festival inside New York City’s Merkin Concert Hall produced a cosmic din for the ages, two genre-obliterating renegades who’ve made indelible marks in the experimental music pantheon—the NYC-bred, Paris-based avant-garde guitar legend and minimalist composer Rhys Chatham and long-running psychedelic free-rock juggernaut and Brooklyn institution Oneida—have joined forces on their first collaborative album proper titled What’s Your Sign?, d…
Amalgam
2016 release. A wild and exciting duo between cellist Okkyung Lee and legendary turntable improviser Christian Marclay performing live at London's Cafe Oto for a single long track that runs through an astonishing dynamic of invention and atmospheres in a gripping and spellbinding set. "May 2014, arriving home after hearing the Café Oto performance now released as Amalgam, I began to write. Over time the text developed, augmented by relevant dreams, literature and boxing metaphors, to become inte…
Vertigo
After more than 25 years of confusing the heck out of anyone who dares turn up to a concert expecting to hear a run-of-the-mill jazz trio, Sydney mavericks The Necks are set to continue to push the trajectory of jazz out of the stratosphere of convention with their new, incredible album. The Necks 18th album Vertigo is an eventful, kaleidoscopic tone poem set against a darkly shimmering background. Slowly but inexorably moving forward, it crosses many frontiers yet remains true to the mission…
Xe
New and unexplored territory from Zs. Xe is the new set of noises from the legendary trio. Taking ideas of minimalism, the avant-garde, jazz fusion and an assortment of rhythmic concepts - they have woven a tapestry of sorts based around drums, percussion, the guitar and the saxophone. This is for fans of the future - so climb into the sonic space ship with an open mind. "Zs is devoid of genre and unclassifiable. Since 2000, founder Sam Hillmer has remained its purveying constant, and…
Full Bleed
For their latest spiritual odyssey, Thurston Moore and John Moloney deliver the volcanic and violent maelstrom, Full Bleed. But unlike the helter-skelter out-jazz of Caught on Tape (“Full bore savage highway stuff, the mind exploding with wall melting emotion,” says Moore/Moloney about that platter), Full Bleed collects nine Herculean sludgefeasts dripping of gnarly metal-damaged heaviosity and punk-jazz skronk-splattered fury, transmitted in an alien language only this duo can convey. “They bec…
The Natural Order
Guitarist Fred Frith and saxophonist John Butcher are titans within the world of improvised music. Over the last four decades, each of these two men has permanently altered the way in which his instrument is heard: Frith with his (at times literal) deconstruction of the electric guitar, and Butcher with his exploration of the physical properties of sound and extended playing techniques.
Though they’ve played live together a few times, The Natural Order, recorded in 2009 and mixed in 2012, …
Locus
Locus, the seventh album by the Chicago Underground Duo (Rob Mazurek and Chad Taylor), follows on the heels of their acclaimed 2012 Northern Spy release Age of Energy. Bits of breakbeat and Afropop are heard within the jazz, ambient and electronica elements of their unmistakable grooves. Also in the mix is a Ghanian folk tune and Ennio Morricone played on cornet, drums, mbira, ballophone, bamboo flute and Game Boy. The pairing came out of the Chicago Underground Orchestra founded by Mazurek almo…
Harmonie du Soir
Rhys Chatham's 'Harmonie Du Soir' presents three compositions. The title track is the first major piece written for the configuration of six electric guitars, electric bass and drums since Die Donnergtter (1986). The second is The Dream of Rhonabwy, a piece written for large brass ensemble and percussion, realized in 2012 by a 70-piece brass band called Harmonie de Pontarlier, lead by the French conductor Patrick Erard. The last track on the CD version and bonus download for the vinyl edition is…
Appalachian excitation
The meeting of composer Arnold Dreyblatt and psych-folk trio Megafaun shouldn’t be seen as unlikely just because it’s cross-generational, or even (arguably) cross-genre. Such categorizations have to be set aside before taking in their Appalachian Excitation. Born in New York in 1953, Dreyblatt came up under such lauded experimental groundbreakers as Alvin Lucier, Pauline Oliveros and La Monte Young, obtaining a Master’s degree in composition from Wesleyan University. Now based in Berlin, where h…
Grain
CD edition "The new Zs lineup (Sam Hillmer, Greg Fox and Patrick Higgins) sounds very much like a new band, at least as evidenced by the Grain EP. The two side-length tracks (coming in at a total of 42-minutes) bear the marks of Zs' sound - repeated phrases, looped or played in situ; buried drones and harsh electronic tones - but it does sound very much like a new band.
There's an extended ambience to the album that trick perceptions of time. Glitches and waves that last only a minute or th…
Make Memories
Until now, Foot Village has worked in the genre of fantasy. Their first three albums constituted a trilogy, telling the abstract story of the first city formed after the apocalypse. The city rose. The city reached glory. The city fought wars. The city crumbled. Now Foot Village has returned from this world of fantasy to our own. Both in the form of a warning and hope. As always, their message travels on the sound of a horde of drums (in fact, there are four drummers in the band); their voices ch…
Score: The Complete Sextet Works 2002-2007
In celebration of their 10 year anniversary New York City-DIY modern composition combo Zs offer this 4CD retrospective. Throughout 10 years of activity, the band has changed in countless ways without ever changing a fierce commitment to inscrutable easthetics & execution crafted to provoke reflection & challenge assumption in the consumption of music. Housed in a 2 piece 55pt box featuring artwork by Fredricks & Mae
The Backward Path
The Backward Path marks a departure for Dan Melchior in a number of ways. It is his first album to feature other musicians since his time with the Broke Revue, and it also marks a change in his songwriting methods, with more heartfelt sentiments being expressed rather than the usual flood of snide non sequiturs. It is also a quieter album, without much of the “did he mean it to sound like that?” sonic onslaught of Catbirds & Cardinals.Dan’s wife Letha Rodman Melchior was diagnosed with cancer in…
Catbirds & Cardinals
Catbirds & Cardinals is the latest psychedelic album lobbed into New World shores from Dan Melchior und das Menace. Coming down slow with a clear vision, it’s a sure hit. Since the late 90s, Shepperton, England native Dan Melchior has consistently delivered an avant-pop that is off-kilter and literate, with a sense of menace and a stronger sense of play. He’s a new Jesus of Cool, riding just about the underground like the antipodean Chris Knox. The sound of Catbirds & Cardinals is clean, lo-fi, …
Hubble Drums
Planned since Hubble’s first live performance in September of 2010, Hubble Drums is an inspired record of new guitar music. Equal parts shred-fi, cyber-dread and fried psychedelia, Hubble Drums marks Ben Greenberg (of Zs and The Men)’s first full-length recording and debut for Northern Spy. Recorded at Python Patrol and lovingly mastered at Bonati Mastering, the CD and 150g LP features original artwork by Michael Yaniro and Ben Greenberg. “Hubble’s Hubble” serves as the soundtrack for a v…
Kenzo Deluxe
Guitarist Chris Forsyth is a unique voice in the realm of American music, having emerged from the challenging free form expressionism of his old group Peeesseye with a lyrical command rare in any genre. His newest work brings his trademark lyricism to new heights in his most straightforward setting yet. Gone are the fleshed out rock band arrangements of last year’s Paranoid Cat LP, replaced on Kenzo Deluxe, by Forsyth shunning overdubs and playing his transcendent songs alone in a room on his el…