★Superior Viaduct
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…
History Is What's Happening
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. Originally released in 1982, History Is What's Happening features one of the most harrowing title/cover art combinations in recent memory. What at first glance looks like a f…
All Corpses Smell The Same
**few copies available** 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. All Corpses Smell The Same, The Ex's first single, marks the beginning of this DIY odyssey -- appearing in June 1980 on Hé Records, a precursor to th…
Cleveland Confidential
**Shipping the next week. Limited edition translucent orange vinyl**"When I say 1980 was a kind of dead zone in the Cleveland music scene, I can hear a collective, 'Isn't every year a dead zone in Cleveland?' Go ahead, take your Johnny Carson-era jokes and see what they buy you. Puff your chest about NYC in '75 or London in '76 or L.A. in '77 to some 27-something today. Allow me to save you face and remind you to add in late '70s Cleveland. Because when you revisit this comp of struggling, strag…
Night After Night
**Limited edition translucent red vinyl** New York no-wavers Ike Yard are perhaps best known for being the first American band signed to Factory Records, and it isn't difficult to hear why: the group's music has much in common with the existential frigidness of Joy Division and early New Order as well as the mutant noise-funk of Section 25 and A Certain Ratio. That said, the sound of Night After Night, the band's debut EP, is one that could only have emerged from the lawless dystopia of '70s New…
Brigitte Fontaine est folle
2020 repress. French poet and chameleonic vocalist Brigitte Fontaine's career spans over four decades. Only a few years before her 1968 debut, Brigitte Fontaine Est Folle, she moved to Paris to become an actress and took her prodigiously mature voice into the studio. Rich in the drama she brought to theater, Fontaine synthesized chanson (French pop song) and world music, which eventually won her international acclaim as a performer and collaborator with a variety of artists from around the world…
Comme A La Radio
**2020 Repress. In process of stocking** Sensational reissue!!! In 1969, a French chanteuse, an Algerian multi-instrumentalist, and a Chicago jazz quartet undertook an experimental, exploratory, revolutionary musical voyage; a redrawing of musical parameters that, to this day, stands as a glittering beacon, glowing in the dark abyss of 'out' music. Featuring Areski Belkacem and Art Ensemble of Chicago, Comme a la Radio is the sophomore album in Brigitte Fontaine's prolific career. Four decades o…
La Planete Sauvage - Original Soundtrack Recording
**2020 Repress** Animated sci-fi masterpiece La Planète Sauvage (a.k.a. Fantastic Planet), winner at Cannes Film Festival in 1973, is a bizarre and beautiful film. Towering blue-skinned figures, tiny humanoids in the midst of revolt, and drug-induced Tantric sex transport viewers to a truly magical setting. Composer Alain Goraguer creates an equally hypnotic score from a palette of effects-laden guitars, flutes, Fender Rhodes and strings. While the lush arrangements are reminiscent of Goraguer's…
Flaming Tunes
**Limited edition clear vinyl with color sleeve (a nod to the original release's hand-colored covers), in process of stocking** 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 revitali…
Seke Molenga & Kalo Kawongolo
Over the years, they would come to say that the Africans just appeared one day in Jamaica. That two Congo men somehow materialized on the streets of Kingston sometime in 1977, almost as if by magic, speaking not a word of English or patwa. The duo, they say, were musicians brought in by a Jamaican promoter – a woman who ditched them, leaving them to fend for themselves, stranded in a strange land.
What really happened is harder to fully divine. The two young Africans – Molenga Mosukola (aka Seke…
Totale's Turns
Given The Fall's penchant for iconoclasm, it's no surprise that they decided to say goodbye to the '70s with a series of gigs at Northern England's gruffest halls. The band's formidable live show was met with even more derision and disorder than customary during these late '79 and early '80 performances, and they skillfully amplified such sentiments back at the crowd. Totale's Turns, The Fall's first live album, was released on Rough Trade just prior to their pivotal third album, 1980's Grotesqu…
Ike Yard
Ike Yard remain a legendary band of early '80s New York City – at once immensely influential, yet obscured by a far-too-brief initial phase. Their debut EP, the dark and absorbing Night After Night, sounds almost like a different group, so rapidly would Ike Yard evolve towards the calmly menacing electro throb of their self-titled LP. Originally released on Factory in 1982, the album put Ike Yard's indelible mark on the synth-driven experimental rock scene then emerging all over the planet. Whi…
In The Kingdom of Dub
Hopeton Brown, better known as Scientist, has been a pioneering figure in the world of dub for 40 years. His early love of electronics proved fruitful when (still a teenager) he was hired at King Tubby's studio in Kingston. Brown quickly ascended the ranks and became heir to Tubby's throne, producing imaginative and technically impressive mixes that solidified his forward-looking nickname. Originally released in 1981, In The Kingdom Of Dub remains one of the best early LPs in Scientist's long ca…
Fluence
Fluence is the brainchild and first release of sound artist / provocateur Pascal Comelade. Recorded in Montpellier, France in 1974-1975, the project consists of exploratory electronic pieces in the Fripp & Eno vernacular with a Kosmische tinge. 'A Few Reasons To Stay / A Few Reasons To Split,' a title inspired by Swiss conceptual artist Urs Lüthi, features Comelade's kaleidoscopic arpeggios and Richard Pinhas' howling guitar, which variously resembles a dreamlike cello and ghostly human moans. '…
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…
Hard Attack
MX-80 SOUND is one of the real oddities in American music. Their debut album, Hard Attack (released in the UK on Island Records), found little-to-no audience in the States upon its release in 1977, yet remains a key document of the mid-'70s proto-punk zeitgeist. Hailing from Bloomington, Indiana, MX-80 SOUND is lead by guitarist Bruce Anderson and defies simple classification with relentless riffs, dual drummers and vocalist Rich Stim's absurdist prose and dizzying sax. Assimilating the avant-ro…
In the Sea
Ellen Fullman began developing The Long String Instrument in her St. Paul, Minnesota studio in 1980 and moved to Brooklyn the following year. Inspired by composer and instrument builder Harry Partch, Fullman’s large-scale work creates droning, organ-like overtones that are as unique in the world of sound as her vision of the instrument itself.Along with her 1985 debut album—appropriately titled The Long String Instrument—Fullman’s only output in the 1980s would be two self-released cassettes, In…
Songs & Melodies, 1973-1977
Since the mid-1960s, Jon Gibson has played a key role in the development of American avant-garde music. As a versatile reed player, he has performed with everyone from Steve Reich and Philip Glass to Terry Riley and La Monte Young. In the 1970s, Gibson would emerge as a minimalist composer in his own right and release two exceptional albums, Visitations and Two Solo Pieces, on Glass' Chatham Square imprint.Songs & Melodies brings together recordings from 1973 to 1977 (mostly previously unrelease…
July 15, 1972
Limited to 750 numbered copies. Comes with poster. For over half a century, Takehisa Kosugi was of the most unique and enduring figures in the Japanese underground. As an art student in Tokyo in the early 1960s, he joined the Fluxus-styled performance unit Hi Re Centre and then founded the improvisational ensemble Group Ongaku, but his most legendary project was The Taj Mahal Travellers – a multicellular organism that included Kosugi, Ryo Koike, Yukio Tsuchiya, Seiji Nagai, Michihiro Kimura, Tok…
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…