★Superior Viaduct
The tail of the tiger
In 1977 an obscure Italian private label issued a record that sounded like it came from outer space. A long and dense trance-inducing drone of sustained notes, rich with overtones and harmonic embellishments, coming from a space so vast and unexplored that seemed almost of non-human, even electronic nature
A Part Of America Therein, 1981
In the summer of 1981, The Fall embarked on their second American tour, criss-crossing the States over a two-month period. Featuring the dual guitar of Marc Riley and Craig Scanlon and rhythm section of Stephen Hanley and Karl Burns, A Part Of America Therein, 1981 would document this fabled journey with crucial performances that show the band evolve from noisemaking lout cultists into true post-punk legends."From the riot-torn streets of Manchester, England to the scenic sewers of Chicago ..." …
Sound
Sound: An Exhibition of Sound Sculpture, Instrument Building and Acoustically Tuned Spaces opened at the Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art in the summer of 1979 (and was also on view later that year at PS1 in New York). Curated by Bob Wilhite and Robert Smith, the exhibition surveyed the field of sound art. The forty-four participants were painters pivoted toward performance, conceptual artists attracted to time-based mediums, self-styled creators of environments, and musicians (formally…
Glamour Girl 1941
Los Angeles Free Music Society (LAFMS) formed in the mid-1970s as a loose-knit experimental music collective and multimedia publishing vehicle. Founded by teenage Le Forte Four members Chip Chapman, Joe Potts and Rick Potts and soon joined by Tom Recchion of Doo-Dooettes, LAFMS incorporated free improvisation, modular synthesizers, tape music, sampling, musique concrète, homemade instruments, noise, mail art and avant-rock in permissive and anarchic sessions at the Raymond Building and Poo-Bah R…
Blorp Esette Volume One
Los Angeles Free Music Society (LAFMS) formed in the mid-1970s as a loose-knit experimental music collective and multimedia publishing vehicle. Founded by teenage Le Forte Four members Chip Chapman, Joe Potts and Rick Potts and soon joined by Tom Recchion of Doo-Dooettes, LAFMS incorporated free improvisation, modular synthesizers, tape music, sampling, musique concrète, homemade instruments, noise, mail art and avant-rock in permissive and anarchic sessions at the Raymond Building and Poo-Bah R…
Live at the Brand
Los Angeles Free Music Society (LAFMS) formed in the mid-1970s as a loose-knit experimental music collective and multimedia publishing vehicle. Founded by teenage Le Forte Four members Chip Chapman, Joe Potts and Rick Potts and soon joined by Tom Recchion of Doo-Dooettes, LAFMS incorporated free improvisation, modular synthesizers, tape music, sampling, musique concrète, homemade instruments, noise, mail art and avant-rock in permissive and anarchic sessions at the Raymond Building and Poo-Bah R…
I.D. Art #2
Los Angeles Free Music Society (LAFMS) formed in the mid-1970s as a loose-knit experimental music collective and multimedia publishing vehicle. Founded by teenage Le Forte Four members Chip Chapman, Joe Potts and Rick Potts and soon joined by Tom Recchion of Doo-Dooettes, LAFMS incorporated free improvisation, modular synthesizers, tape music, sampling, musique concrète, homemade instruments, noise, mail art and avant-rock in permissive and anarchic sessions at the Raymond Building and Poo-Bah R…
Reflex
Francesco Messina is perhaps best known for his collaboration with fellow composer Raul Lovisoni on the album Prati Bagnati Del Monte Analogo, originally released on seminal Italian label Cramps in 1979. Along with contemporaries Franco Battiato, Juri Camisasca and Giusto Pio, Messina would help reshape the world of modern composition with an organic rawness and haunting beauty.In 1979, Messina was asked to perform at the Teatro Quartiere in Milan. As the composer writes in the liner notes, "Due…
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…
La Jetee
**Deluxe Edition, 200 copies on clear vinyl, Stoughton Tip-on gatefold cover** "'This is the story of a man, marked by an image from his childhood.' Thus begins, with deceptive simplicity, Chris Marker's La Jetée (1962). The film, by far Marker's bestknown work, synthesizes many of the elusive filmmaker's central preoccupations -- time and memory, power and resistance, the ephemerality and resilience of love -- yet it also undermines the very idea of film. Composed almost entirely of still photo…
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…
Suburban Lawns (12")
If your brain has a shortlist of bands that instantly evoke New Wave, Suburban Lawns deserve a slot right next to the likes of Devo, Talking Heads and the B-52's. After putting out two singles on their own Suburban Industrial imprint, the Lawns signed to I.R.S. Records and released their debut LP in 1981. While the band gained cult status thanks in part to a Jonathan Demme-produced music video which aired on Saturday Night Live, their self-titled album would sadly be the five-piece's only full-l…
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…
Dignity of Labour
** This first-time vinyl reissue (configured as single LP) comes with 24-inch x 18-inch poster and 24-page booklet ** In 1981, The Ex started squatting Villa Zuid, an estate overlooking abandoned Van Gelder paper factory in the village of Wormer, Netherlands. Formerly the home of the factory’s manager, the Villa briefly served as the band’s base of operations and would inspire one of The Ex’s most impactful, enduring albums in their 40+ year history. Originally released in 1983, Dignity Of Labou…
Tumult
** This first-time vinyl reissue comes with 28-inch x 39- inch full-color poster ** While awaiting the release of Dignity Of Labour, The Ex headed back into the studio in early 1983; this time with a new friend—The Mekons’ Jon Langford—helping produce. Originally released in April 1983 (only a month after Dignity Of Labour), Tumult marks a major evolution in Ex-sound. Opener “Bouquet Of Barbed Wire” emerges snarling out of post-punk atmospherics with Terrie Ex’s glacial guitar, Bas Masbeck’s lop…
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…
Model Express
* Edition of 500. Gold LP * Cindy Lee, the performance and songwriting vehicle of Canadian artist Patrick Flegel (who fronted influential indie group Women earlier), previously stunned listeners with Act Of Tenderness, a heart-wrenching statement informed by the noirish core of celebrity, and has continued to enchant with every album, including the startling What's Tonight To Eternity released earlier this year.
Model Express originally appeared as a self-released edition of 100 gold cassettes. …
A Monastic Trio
**2020 repress** Born Alice McLeod into a musical Detroit family, Alice Coltrane began playing piano at age seven and later studied with Bud Powell in Paris. Upon returning to the States, she joined vibraphonist Terry Gibbs' group and eventually shared a bill with the John Coltrane Quartet. In 1965 the two wed in Juárez, Mexico, and played alongside one another until her husband's last performance in May, 1967.A Monastic Trio, created in the year following her husband's passing, is Alice Coltran…
Niandra LaDes And Usually Just A T-Shirt
** 2020 small repress **Niandra LaDes And Usually Just A T-Shirt is the first solo record by John Frusciante. Between 1990 and 1992 the guitarist made a series of 4-track recordings, which at the time were not intended for commercial release. After leaving the band Red Hot Chili Peppers in 1992, Frusciante was encouraged by friends to release the material that he wrote in his spare time during the Blood Sugar Sex Magik sessions. Originally released on Rick Rubin's American Recordings label in 19…
Disturbing Domestic Peace
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. Disturbing Domestic Peace, The Ex's debut album, appeared mere months after their first single, 1980's 'All Corpses Smell The Same'. Originally released on the band's own Ver…