★Superior Viaduct
First Rehearsal Tapes
*2021 repress* "On Suicide's First Rehearsal Tapes, recorded in 1975, Alan Vega and Martin Rev create minimalist aural structures, traces of which would surface on their eponymous debut album, released on the Red Star label in late 1977."These songs are not a sketchpad of semi-formed ideas. The First Rehearsal Tapes comprise an audio diary of two men out in the ether, measuring themselves as evolving individual artists and as a unit who would rely on inseparability to realize their unique and of…
Slates
* 2021 LP edition * compiles the six tracks from the original EP release, their March 1981 Peel session and an early '80s studio outtake. Liner notes by Brian Turner. If The Fall truly is a cult band, then Slates both benefits from and reinforces such shrouded obsessions. In presenting these six particular songs as a 10-inch EP, the inherent and attractive difficulty of The Fall's sound is made physical, framing the urgency of their singles from this period (notably How I Wrote 'Elastic Man' an…
Screamers Demo Hollywood 1977
** small repress available ** Black vinyl version. "These songs were recorded a few months after the Los Angeles punk scene began. These five statements of intent transcend Punk and project forward into the future: to the analog synth wave of the late '70s and beyond, to the present day, four decades later, when they finally receive an official release. Sourced from the original reel-to-reels, they are a revelation compared to the countless copies that have been circulating by multiple generati…
Secret Passage
* Blue Version * Growing up in deindustrialized Providence, Rhode Island of the 1970s and 1980s provided NYC-based composer and interdisciplinary artist Gavilán Rayna Russom access to derelict subterranean spaces including the mile-long East Side Rail Tunnel. The tunnel's reverberant darkness would produce distinctive sensory effects and host Russom's formative experiences of interpersonal connectedness, liminality, transgender identity, anti-capitalist desire and state repression.Secret Passage…
The Avengers
In the late '70s, The Avengers established themselves as one of the US's preeminent punk bands. Fusing incisive guitar hooks, explosive rhythms and adolescent venom, the group forged some of the most in-your-face songs of the era. Their live shows were legendary, playing up and down the West Coast and even blowing Sex Pistols off the stage at the latter's final performance. As Byron Coley writes in the liner notes, 'Of the best bands of San Francisco's first wave in 1977, The Avengers were by fa…
Radio Silence
With This Kind Of Punishment, Graeme Jefferies and Peter Jefferies produced some of most adept DIY sounds to emerge from New Zealand's 1980s post-punk scene. After their phenomenal self-titled debut and classic A Beard Of Bees, the brothers would make one last album together, In The Same Room. Originally released in 1987 on Flying Nun, In The Same Room is perhaps the straightest rock offering in TKP's esteemed catalogue. Opening track "Immigration Song" expertly pairs jagged guitars with wrathf…
San Francisco's First And Only Rock 'N' Roll Band
Limited edition translucent blue vinyl. One of the most savagely cool and confrontational punk acts in history, Crime famously dubbed themselves "San Francisco's First and Only Rock 'N' Roll Band." This inflammatory claim was supported by unpredictable live shows that often ended in riots. In 1978, film producer Larry Larson captured Crime in their natural habitat, the dimly-lit nightclub Mabuhay Gardens. They looked and sounded more severe than anyone in San Francisco was ready for. The foota…
After Its Own Death / Walking in a Spiral
** Grouper’s Liz Harris quietly released this album of primordial soundscapes a few weeks ago under the new Nivhek alias, initially released in a private edition that vanished almost as quickly as it was announced, After its own death / Walking in a spiral towards the house is presented here in a beautiful second edition on Superior Viaduct's imprint W.25TH.** Opaque assemblages of Mellotron, guitar, field recordings, tapes and broken FX pedals by Pacific Northwest artist Liz Harris, created dur…
Inscrutably Obvious
A lost electronic gem of UK post punk vintage resurfaces with Kevin Harrison’s 1981 debut ‘Inscrutably Obvious’
Iceland
Originally released in 1979, Iceland is Richard Pinhas' third solo album and his first following the breakup of Heldon. While moving away from the maximalism of his old band, paring down Heldon's hybrid of otherworldly sci-fi imagery and pummeling psych-prog riffs, the journey through Iceland is decidedly more inward. Consisting of longer, brooding synth-based pieces as well as short proto-industrial études and interstitial sketches, Iceland features Pinhas' delay-ridden electric guitar, pulsat…
The Rough Trade Singles
The Rough Trade Singles collects The Fall's four singles recorded for this influential label in 1980 and 1983 – How I Wrote 'Elastic Man' / City Hobgoblins, Totally Wired / Putta Block, The Man Whose Head Expanded / Ludd Gang and Kicker Conspiracy – none of which appeared on any of the band's studio LPs. With 7-inches being the era's vehicle for buzzing communiqués, The Fall would use the format for short-form, standalone works rather than as mere promotional devices for forthcoming albums. "To…
Canti E Vedute Del Giardino Magnetico
2023 Repress American composer and multi-instrumentalist Alvin Curran has remained one of the great emblems of experimental music for the last half-century. In 1966, along with Frederic Rzewski and Richard Teitelbaum, Curran co-founded Musica Elettronica Viva, a seminal gesture in collective free improvisation. In the early '70s, his solo work would become a crucial bridge between minimalist traditions on both sides of the Atlantic. Canti E Vedute Del Giardino Magnetico, Curran's solo debut, was…
Go to Town
The Pin Group went back into the studio in January 1982 to record their third and final classic release. Featuring an expanded five-piece lineup with Mary Heney on guitar/vocals and Peter Fryer on viola, Go To Town is a work of taut perfection. Showcasing the band's dramatic chiaroscuro textures and arresting lyrics, "Long Night" and "When I Tell You" make staggeringly clear how much sonic ground The Pin Group covered in their unfortunately short tenure.
Rosemary Lane
Release Date on May 5th. By the time Rosemary Lane was released in 1971, Bert Jansch had covered a great deal of territory on numerous albums as a solo artist, collaborations with John Renbourn and records by the band in which he and Renbourn sang and played guitar, Pentangle. Returning to the intimate economy of his self-titled debut LP from a half-dozen or so years earlier, Rosemary Lane was recorded on portable equipment by engineer/producer Bill Leader and featured Jansch with no accompani…
Birthday Blues
Release Date on May 5th. Bert Jansch's freewheeling fifth album, Birthday Blues, occupies a unique place in his solo discography. Released in 1969, the same year Basket of Light propelled Pentangle into the UK pop charts, Birthday Blues almost sounds like a Pentangle LP missing John Renbourn and Jacqui McShee. Backed-up by bandmates Danny Thompson and Terry Cox, Jansch neither holds back his characteristic moodiness nor takes himself too seriously. What's more, Jansch is in love. Heather Rosem…
Four Organs/Phase Patterns
Steve Reich remains one of the most important figures in 20th century music. Though he studied at the prestigious arts institutions Julliard and Mills College, by the mid- 1960s Reich set about dismantling the very orthodoxy that he had been trained in. Forming a new musical language based on repetitive processes, Reich became established as part of the so-called 'Big Four' of New York minimalists (along with La Monte Young, Terry Riley and Philip Glass). Reich's influence can easily be seen tod…
Je Ne Connais Pas Cet Homme
Following their groundbreaking collaboration with the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Comme à la Radio, Areski and Brigitte Fontaine began recording almost exclusively together as a duo. Originally released in 1973, Je Ne Connais Pas Cet Homme is their first record billed under both names. Deeply rooted in North African and European folk traditions, the album features evocative vignettes with breezy vocals and minimal accompaniment of classical guitar, strings, and woodwinds. As always, there is a m…
Murder By Guitar
*Reissue on Superior Viaduct* "San Francisco's first and only rock n' roll band, Crime loomed over the entire Mabuhay Gardens scene with their blistering 1976 single "Hot Wire My Heart." Crime's loose, damaged rock n' roll was as immediate as it was controversial. They were Punk by any definition, yet shunned the label with a guttersnipe sneer. Their meticulously cultivated aesthetic of S&M graphics and police uniforms produced some of the era's most indelible imagery. One of their finest…