★Superior Viaduct
Pokkeherrie
Emerging out of Amsterdam's vibrant squat scene in 1979, The Ex – a name chosen for the ease and speed with which it could be spray-painted onto a wall – have for four decades been an entirely self-sustaining musical entity, charting a course through the global underground with a spirit of freedom and radical exploration. On 1985's Pokkeherrie (Dutch for "terrible noise"), The Ex return to the more stripped-down instrumentation on their early LPs. A key lineup change would also see the arrival o…
Blueprints For A Blackout
Emerging out of Amsterdam's vibrant squat scene in 1979, The Ex – a name chosen for the ease and speed with which it could be spray-painted onto a wall – have for four decades been an entirely self-sustaining musical entity, charting a course through the global underground with a spirit of freedom and radical exploration. Blueprints For A Blackout, The Ex's fifth album and first double LP, combines caustic studio experimentations and loose songs from their gripping live-set at the time. The band…
Flaming Tunes
2023 repress. Post-punk, rising like a phoenix during the second half of the 1970s, was a movement that few could have anticipated or foreseen. Sophisticated, and impossible to nail down, bands like Wire, P.I.L., The Pop Group, The Fall, A Certain Ratio, Pere Ubu, Throbbing Gristle, and dozens of others, wedded forward thinking radicalism and the focused energy of punk, with revitalized forms of experimentalism that rethought the terms and ownership of the musical avant-garde. Of post-punk’s fi…
Perverted By Language
The Fall returned to Rough Trade in 1983 to release a pair of singles ("The Man Whose Head Expanded" and "Kicker Conspiracy") and Perverted By Language, their sixth proper studio album. Perverted By Language hints at the band's shift towards a distinctly pop approach, one that they would perfect via their Beggars Banquet output that immediately followed. Yet again, the force and panic of their initial Rough Trade recordings remains the foundation for much of the album. A transitional recording i…
Hardcore Vol. 2
2023 Repress. Devo's Hardcore documents the group's beginning as pre-punk outcasts in the fertile Akron, Ohio underground rock scene. Spawned at the nearby college of Kent State, site of the infamous May 4 Massacre, Devo formed as a conceptual art project armed with a radical philosophy of de-evolution. Brothers Mothersbaugh (Mark, Bob, and Jim) and Brothers Casale (Jerry and Bob) along with drummer Alan Myers soon whipped-up an otherworldly brand of "devolved blues" that could hold its own alon…
Hardcore Vol. 1
2023 repress. **Quality reissue of legendary early demos, available for the first time in over 20 years. Includes liner-notes insert with Moshe Brakha's photography** San Francisco's cherry-picking reissue label, Superior Viaduct, give new life to these crucial volumes of art-pop and pre-punk prototypes from Akron, Ohio's finest. 'Hardcore' documents the formative Devo's years, 1974-1977, of the brothers Mothersbaugh (Mark, Bob, and Jim) and Brothers Casale (Jerry and Bob) and their drummer Alan…
Dream House 78'17
** Comes with download card. ** Originally released in 1974 on Shandar, Dream House 78'17" is the second full-length album by La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela. This first-time US edition reproduces the original gatefold sleeve with beautiful calligraphy by Zazeela and liner notes by Young and French musicologist Daniel Caux.
Side one was recorded at a private concert (on the date and time indicated by the title) and features Young and Zazeela's voices against a sine wave drone with Jon Hassel…
The Complete Yale Concert, 1966
Few copies available. Exclusive translucent red vinyl. Limited to 500 numbered copies. Includes In Concert At Yale University and Nommo with reproduction of hand-painted sleeve and historical inserts.
The late percussionist Milford Graves was one of the most unique artists the world has ever seen. Born in Jamaica, Queens in 1941, he began his career in the early '60s as a part of New York's vibrant Latin jazz scene. His focus quickly turned inward, shifting towards a practice that explored the v…
Bäbi, Nommo, In Concert At Yale University (3LP Bundle)
Just Restocked ** The three groundbreaking Milford Graves LPs in bundle at a special price. Sourced from the master tapes. First-time vinyl reissue ** Babi: By the early '70s, Milford Graves had more or less stopped gigging. Having learned his lesson the hard way in multiple-night runs like a legendary Slugs' residency with Albert Ayler, he knew that the level of energy that he put out during a performance would be difficult to sustain over the long haul. A concert was a kind of absolute ritual …
In Concert At Yale University
Bomb! Sourced from the master tapes. First-time vinyl reissue Black vinyl single LP version. The late percussionist Milford Graves was one of the most unique artists the world has ever seen. Born in Jamaica, Queens in 1941, he began his career in the early '60s as a part of New York's vibrant Latin jazz scene. His focus quickly turned inward, shifting towards a practice that explored the very nature of self. From his work in the New York Art Quartet and collaborations with Albert Ayler, Sonny …
The Complete Yale Concert, 1966
Bomb! ** Sourced from the master tapes. First-time vinyl reissue ** Groundbreaking early work from drummer Milford Graves and pianist Don Pullen – a set of long, free improvisations that were originally issued on Graves' Self-Reliance Productions label! The music is even more striking than sounds from the time on the ESP label – and also really predates some of the freer work of this type from the European scene – as Graves is a monster on the drum kit and a range of percussion, reaching out wit…
Babi
Mega Tip! **Sourced from the master tapes. First-time vinyl reissue ** By the early '70s, Milford Graves had more or less stopped gigging. Having learned his lesson the hard way in multiple-night runs like a legendary Slugs' residency with Albert Ayler, he knew that the level of energy that he put out during a performance would be difficult to sustain over the long haul. A concert was a kind of absolute ritual for him, after which he would be totally spent, emotionally and physically. Graves rar…
Pure
In the swirl of underground music emerging from Dunedin, New Zealand in the 1980s, Peter Gutteridge stands as one of the era's most intense and shadowy figures. Despite being a founding member of The Clean and The Chills, Gutteridge would eschew indie-rock fame for the hypnotic and driving sounds of his later bands such as Snapper.
Fittingly, it is Pure – Gutteridge's lone solo album of intimate home recordings – that serves as the most revealing and celebrated release of his career. As Peter Je…
Black Woman + It's Not Up To Us (2LP Bundle)
This special bundle collects the recent reissues on Superior Viaduct of two seminal albums originally released on Vortex records: Byard Lancaster "It's Not Up To Us" (LP, 1968)Sonny Sharrock "Black Woman" (LP, 1969)"Warren 'Sonny' Sharrock died of a heart attack at the age of 53 in 1994. At the time of his death, many writers noted that he had recently landed a contract with a major label (RCA) and was perhaps 'destined for big things.' In my opinion, these writers missed the point. Although Mr.…
It's Not Up To Us
Another legendary one out @Superior Viaduct, the super rare (and amazing) debut by sax / flute player Byard Lancaster on Atlantic's subsidiary label Vortex dedicated to avant-garde jazz. Featuring Sonny Sharrock on guitar. Quoting the Andy Beta's brilliant review on Pitchfork "When John Coltrane succumbed to cancer in 1967, free jazz/fire music was sucked into a giant vacuum along with him. A patron of music and patron saint to so many of its players, there was a crossroads left in his wake. Ele…
Black Woman
An extraordinary piece of energy music that goes way beyond jazz. A legendary album produced by Herbie Mann and originally released in 1969 on the Atco subsidiary Vortex. Sonny Sharrock (and his wife Linda) recorded these tracks with a cast of New York free jazz all-stars including pianist Dave Burrell, drummer Milford Graves, trumpeter Teddy Daniel, and bassist Norris Jones among the others. A radical album with uncompromising blasts of atonal electric guitar, free-form sonic explorations, ecce…
In Greenwich Village
Originally released in 1967, Ayler's first LP on Impulse! and arguably his best for the label. "During 1967-69 avant-garde innovator Albert Ayler recorded a series of albums for Impulse that started on a high level and gradually declined in quality. This LP, Ayler's first Impulse set, was probably his best for that label. There are two selections apiece from a pair of live appearances with Ayler having a rare outing on alto on the emotional 'For John Coltrane' and the more violent 'Change Has Co…
Lament For The Rise and Fall of the Elephantine Crocodile
First-time vinyl reissue is limited to 750 numbered copies. Comes with poster. Yoshi Wada's Lament For The Rise And Fall Of The Elephantine Crocodile, originally released in 1982 on India Navigation, remains one of the most remarkable flowers to grow in the rarefied air of American minimalism – akin to Terry Riley's Reed Streams and Pauline Oliveros' Accordion & Voice, yet with a wild, liberated energy all of its own. After graduating from Kyoto University of Fine Arts with a degree in sculptur…
Linkage
First-time vinyl reissue is limited to 750 numbered copies. Comes with booklet. Terry Fox was a first generation Bay Area conceptual artist. Beginning in the 1970s, he worked extensively with sound, especially the use of piano wires detached from their native instrument and anchored between opposing walls of the performance space. Linkage, Fox's first album, was originally released in 1982 to accompany an installation at Kunstmuseum Luzern in Switzerland. The record would mark Fox's first attemp…
Pale Bloom
**Black Vinyl LP edition** Pale Bloom finds Sarah Davachi coming full circle. After abandoning the piano studies of her youth for a series of albums utilizing everything from pipe and reed organs to analog synthesizers, this prolific Los Angeles-based composer returns to her first instrument for a radiant work of quiet minimalism and poetic rumination.Recorded at Berkeley, California's famed Fantasy Studios, Pale Bloom is comprised of two delicately-arranged sides. The first – a three-part suite…