★Penultimate Press
The Fluid Hammer
Pancrace is a quintet from France comprising Prune Bécheau, Arden Day, Julien Desailly, Léo Maurel, and Jan Vysocky. Pancrace began with a residence in 2015 at the Saint Pancrace church in Dangolsheim where the instrument inventor Léo Maurel resides. Pancrace's debut self-titled double-LP was released by Penultimate Press in 2017 and ended up on The Wire's best releases of that year. After the first record and subsequent tour the band were despondent that the main character of their story, the c…
A Sunset for Walter
Penultimate Press present A Sunset for Walter, the first duo release from long-time collaborators Jérôme Noetinger and Anthony Pateras. "Having worked together in a number of different collaborative contexts over the years, the pair used Pateras' 2018 residency at Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart as an opportunity to develop a major durational work for Steinway piano and multiple Revox tape machines. Presenting four excerpts from a three-hour concert, the LP's opening moments immediately establish …
The Blue Horse
Sholto Dobie is an artist and performer born in Edinburgh and living in London. His solo output is marked by live performances that are characteristically delicate, evocative, and absurd. He uses his own instruments, crudely assembled from materials such as reeds, whistles, bin bags, fans, and air compressors, alongside loose performative structures, to respond to places and situations. He plays in Al Fresco (with Lia Mazzari and Tom White) and regularly collaborates with Ben Pritchard, he has a…
Precious Waste In Our Wake
**280 copies** Debut full-length from London-based three-piece originally hailing from New Zealand (Matthew Hyland), Germany (Anja Büchele), and Romania (Dennis Debitsev). Precious Waste In Our Wake (full title written nowhere: "The Fucking Terrible Receding Shapes, We Shed Precious Waste In Our Wake") is an endlessly beautiful, dense, and chaotic crawl through so many forms it can be difficult to ascertain what is actually at play here. Ostensibly a "rock" band carved from the same plank as pre…
Who will listen to aches that Everyone has 7"
New on Penultimate Press. Limited to 150 copies. Who will listen to aches that Everyone has’ is a telaesthetic document of disquiet, distance, and disintegrating memory. Careful mantels, rumours of summer, a nocturne, the black inside; Septembers wither, sentiments wane, the chamber-band plays. Parlours are MB – violin, piano, spokes, hotel bell, lighthouse bell LR – cello ML – pianette LF – cutlery SM – silhouette
Towers, Open, Fire / Looking For Business
New on Penultimate Press. Limited to 150 copies. Notes from Penultimate Press: Nether neither either ether [C.B.]. Bad bad grace back for a death-affirming day. Hard-to-Reach claimants born in the wrong place (Bayern Tāmaki Makaurau, Arkhangel district), put out too tender & possessed by spite. 3 x negation = 15 years Philosophie Queen, 18 Meanstricken, meaning totgeschlagen! No end to the keratodermic bouzouki, knock-off Glock, plastic reed, Tascam Spiel. There’s nothing not superficial about i…
Moss Trumpet
Edition of 250. Having released four full-length albums framed around more song-oriented spheres, Melbourne artist Francis Plagne has concurrently moved around collaborative endeavors with Andrew Chalk, Joe Talia, and Crys Cole. He was also a part of that Food Court record released on Graham Lambkin's Kye label in 2014. Which brings us to Moss Trumpet, Plagne's first solo album which exclusively orbits a more abstract domain. Taking inspiration from Costin Miereanu's Luna Cinese (1975), this gen…
A Gift Like A Hollow Vessel
Edition of 250. Melbourne-based artist Arek Gulbenkoglu presents A Gift Like A Hollow Vessel, his second full-length album for Penultimate Press. Following on from the 2017 release Three Days Afterwards (PP 029LP), A Gift Like A Hollow Vessel sees a sharper scalpel at play, resulting in a more nuanced release which unfolds a curious journey of suburban psychedelia. Material source from voice and body sounds, recording of non-musical processes, actions and events, breath, tapes of animal sounds s…
Disfigured With Abbreviations
Edition of 250. Debut recording from two troubadours of oppositional creep, MP Hopkins and Mark Harwood. Inspired by Philip K. Dick and the useless machines that haunt us all, Disfigured With Abbreviations is a roundtable exquisite corpse which crawls through a miraculous environment, at once sensual and sinister. How is it that the perpetual promise of a future lands us in a deeper quagmire? How do two gentlemen with scruffy vocabularies fall into a sonic landscape of such haunted beauty? Follo…
The executioner
First in a series of two releases unveiling the previously unissued soundtracks made for the films of Ursula Reuter Christiansen by her partner and collaborator Henning Christiansen. The Executioner ("Skarpretteren") is Ursula's first film from 1971 and is now considered one of the most important works of early Danish feminist art. A highly praised recent show at the Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen highlighted the pertinent themes and ongoing urgency which lies within this bold symbolic w…
Den Rode Skov
Second in a series of two previously unreleased soundtracks Henning Christiansen made for the films made by his partner and collaborator Ursula Reuter Christiansen. Den Røde Skov ("The Red Forest") was Ursula's second film made in 1986. In stark contrast to the exquisite romantic melancolia of their first collaboration, The Executioner (PP 034LP), Den Røde Skov resides as one of the wildest recordings in the entire Christiansen catalog. Aligned more with works like the legendary collaboration wi…
Astor
The fourth Astor offering presents itself as a limited cassette, intended to fill the vacuum prior to the next full-length LP expected to hatch in the year of 2018. A self-titled diary-esque offering, this collects recordings made in the UK and Europe throughout 2017 -- from a toilet on a train in France to a piece played on Henning Christiansen's piano on the island of Møn in Denmark. Here you'll embark on a journey of sound that travels through a vast terrain which holds itself together …
Vang Circular
Vang Circular is the first outing from Timo van Luijk (La Scie Dorée / Af Ursin, Elodie) and Mark Harwood (Penultimate Press / Astor). Employing vibes, mellotron, natural reader, an iron ant, synth, metal pipes, slide guitar and a double bass these audacious souls conjure a wonky musical vision that gently peels away the familiar The results are a surprising synthesis of two individual and somewhat oppositional aesthetics. From the farthest reaches of the galaxy to the highest celestial p…
Rodhaette/Ruinmusik
Two previously unreleased works from the late Danish composer, musician, publisher, artist, and Fluxus actionist Henning Christiansen. "Rødhætte" (1985) is a rendition of Little Red Riding Hood featuring Ursula Reuter Christiansen as narrator. All the hallmarks of Henning's unique approach to music/sound appear as the tale goes deeper into the depths of animalistic frenzy. "Ruinmusic" (1984) inhabits the last breath off the piano housed within the former Marienborg Manor. Prior to the destru…
Op.192 Umwalzung
Op.192 Umwälzung - Fluxorum Organum 1990 Eurasienstab Ist Immernoch Angelpunkt is a previously unissued work by Henning Christiansen from 1990. Around the formation of the European Union, Henning approached his original Eurasienstab organ recordings from 1968 as a platform to remold a vast amount of audio he made over the subsequent years This special two-CD release comprises two different mixes of Umwälzung that were made for Werner Durand in 1990 to be used as backing tapes for a performanc…
Ksiezyc
CD version. Finally here, this hard to classify outstanding Polish record (meaning ‘Moon’) a remarkable and at times extremely thought provoking fusion of modern classical and medieval sensibilities, combining piano, flute, and unique fairy tale inspired vocal experiments written by Remigiusz Mazur-Hanaj. Absolutely timeless and criminally unknown, even in underground music circles. Penultimate Press is proud to reissue the defining statement by Polish outfit Ksiezyc (Moon). The spirit of Ksiez…
My Undocumented Alien Clarinet
What constitutes an unidentified sighting, the rarely heard "alien" clarinet playing of Joe McPhee and the ineffable electronics of Bryan Eubanks? Penultimate Press present My Undocumented Alien Clarinet: a strange sensual addition to the ever inquisitive McPhee canon. My Undocumented Alien Clarinet is a beguiling document of a performance held at Alternative Books, Kingston, New York, Sunday, August 6, 2006 under the auspices of the Pauline Oliveros Foundation's New Vanguard Series. My Undocume…
Three Days Afterwards
Three Days Afterwards is the fourth solo release from Arek Gulbenkoglu. Within manifests a disorientating assignment of tones, textures, and voice. Hovering around the key words below there is an unsettling psychedelic music - ready ripe and raw for the current foreboding age: Sickness; Rooms; FM synthesis; The fickle; Objects; Rituals; Armenia; Vibrations; The inconsequential; Three days afterwards; Arek Gulbenkoglu. Mastered by Joe Talia. Artwork concept by Arek Gulbenkoglu; Layout by Ma…
Gegenschein
Small repress. Irish artist Áine O'Dwyer follows her highly acclaimed Music For Church Cleaners vol. I and II double LP (2015) with two LP releases, Gegenschein and Locusts (PP 027LP). While continuing to explore the church organ as the primary instrument, these two releases steer away from Church Cleaners in both sonic content and themes explored. Gegenschein was recorded at the Franciscan Friary in Limerick, Ireland. O'Dwyer gained access to the Friary in 2012 and explored both the pipe organ …
Opus 67 Strategygetarts A Symphony, Hommage a Richard Demarco
This record is a lie and a failure - a triumph and truth. Such is the condition that Henning Christiansen build across his entire career. One the 20th Century’s most striking and visionary composers - perhaps the most notable of Fluxus’ Danish arm, Christiansen was a radical collectivist as much as an assertive individualist - contradictory and reactionary - possessed by a singular vision which drove him down uncharted paths. Christiansen’s life, with the sprawling body of work it left in its w…