New Arrivals
A closely woven fabrik
For a number of years as West Head Project, we've been making site specific sound events and recordings at outdoor locations - initially these were held at West Head in Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park. We've gone on to play in special sites around Australia and this disc documents our work on Maria Island off the east coast of Tasmania where we were resident for 10 days, guests of 10 Days on the Island Festival and Parks and Wildlife Service Tasmania. Auditory transmogrification of Tasmani…
SID Chip Sounds: The Music Of The Commodore 64
Compilation of music from classic Commodore 64 computer games. The 18 original pieces of music have been remastered for this release. When people talk about "Commodore 64 music," it's easy to forget they're not talking about a musical style: they're talking about a delivery mechanism. What that convenient phrase hides is the sheer amount of originality and creativity that went into creating the music for games on the Commodore 64. Included on this compilation is some of their most celebra…
Fe3O4 - Magnetite
Vainio is back with his fifth album for the esteemed Touch label! Currently based in Berlin, was one half of the minimal electronic duo Pan Sonic from Finland, (with Ilpo Väisänen). Before starting Pan Sonic in the beginning of the 90's, Mika Vainio has played electronics and drums as part of the early Finnish industrial and noise scene. His solo works, under his own name and under aliases like Ø, are known for their analogue warmth and electronic harshness. Be it abstract drone works or m…
Dispersal Patterns
Collaborating since 2004, Dispersal Patterns is Bach and Kannenberg's second joint project. Departing from their earlier emphasis on systems and graphic notation, they here rely on intuitive communication as they weave two improvised soundscapes from quiet field recordings, analogue instrumentation, digital synthesis, found sounds and minimal signal manipulations. Bach and Kannenberg have previously explored concepts of place, soundscape and transmission in their first collaboration, Two …
Chantal
An inedite work by the great composer Luc Ferrari: 'chantal, ou le portrait d'une villageoise' 1977-1978. Stereo magnetic tape. Mastering: Jérôme Joy, Meriol Lehmann-Avatar.
Peradam
In Rene Daumal's Mount Analogue, a peradam is described as a clear and extremely hard stone, a true crystal. It is so transparent that it is nearly impossible to see. To discover a peradam was always the result of an inner act. At said moment in time, the stone's brilliance might catch the eye of one who seeks the truth. Most peradams were found on the rough and dangerous trails up the mountain. Peradam is the result of Marcia Bassett (Zaimph, Hototogisu) and Jenny Grf (Harrius, Metalux) collabo…
Michiyuki
'Thoughtful improvisation from percussionist Tatsuya Nakatani in a duo with Kaoru Watanabe on shinobue, noh kan & ryuteki, stunningly beautiful passages to active and unusual musical forms. The blending of traditional and radical new styles makes this a fascinating disc, with great communication and excellent pacing between the two players. Recommended for aural world travelers.'
Phoenix & Phaedra Holding Patterns
Live composition for portable radios, FM transmitter, 4 corner speaker PA, found sound textures, & Shruti drone box. Sound is all around us. An ethereal tapestry of invisible radio waves and sound pressure waves fills our world. Live in concert, Phoenix and Phaedra plays with our sense of place and scale, by using a surround sound speaker system in combination with a short range FM transmitter which broadcasts to a collection of hand held radios located within the audience. The concert is perfor…
Brahms’ Deutsche Volkslieder
"Only one face": Following their price-winnig recording Schubertlieder, the Tyrolean Musicbanda Franui have now taken up Johannes Brahms' German Folk Songs.
Wayfaring Strangers: Guitar Soli
another gem, a wonderful collection of obscure solo acoustic guitar tunes from the mid 60s up to the dawn of the 80s -- beautiful work from a slew of players we've never heard of -- but we'd put right up there with Fahey and Basho in the way they reach from the back porch to the cosmos with just their fingers and some strings! One thing we love about this set, and the Numero Group releases to date, is how deep they dig and what beauty they unearth, somehow with impeccable sound quality. S…
Point Break
In 2010 electronic musician Esther Venrooy and drummer Lander Gyselinck were invited to collaborate with two Chinese musicians during the Shanghai World Expo. This event inspired Venrooy and Gyselinck to start their own collaboration which resulted in the creation of Point Break. Fascinated by speech patterns, film dialogues and cut-up techniques they explore the interaction between acoustic drums, electronics and digital processing.
Ex 30: 30 Years of The Ex
30 years of The Ex - a double album compilation featuring songs from all Ex albums from 1980 until 2006, absolutely compehensive. All songs remastered for this release by Colin McLean at OT301, Amsterdam.
Courants des Vents
An intense, meditative journey through the sound of stone, one continuous piece of more than three quarters of an hour during which the normal rules of time and flow are suspended by this master of lithophones.
Volume objects
In the desire to make recorded sound as tactile as possible Autistici (UK), recently featured on 12k’s Blueprints compilation (12k1039), has sculpted found objects, broken acoustic instruments, synthesizers and environmental recordings into Volume Objects. Expertly realized and designed, Volume Objects is loose and organic and demands careful listening. Melody and form are hinted at and then in a whisper, a crackle, are gone. A sense of narrative and place created as if a hundred tiny objects ar…
Fancies, forbearance
Fancy: a 17th century term generally describing a composition in which form is of secondary importance. Fancies were usually contra-puntal and in several sections. (The Oxford Dictionary of Music)Fancies (2009) served to reconcile previously unsettled material, based upon a scheme that condones disparity between its constituent parts. In the period since its completion, and subsequent issue on cassette, Fancies has come to represent an antithesis to what I originally termed ‘a work in parenthesi…
In The Mouth - A Hand
Rune Grammofon presents the third album from Swedish trio Fire! -- something of a supergroup with members from already well-known projects. And again, it's a collaboration, this time with the extraordinary and prolific guitarist Oren Ambarchi. With their heavy, hypnotic, psychedelic rock'n'jazz explorations, they have carved out a different sound than any of the groups they are normally associated with. Sax player, improviser, composer and fervent record collector Mats Gustafsson is proba…
AIA
This is the first CD issue of Grouper's 2011 self released two part album subtitled 'Dream Loss' and 'Alien Observer,' comprised of songs written and recorded over the last four years. A chronological order informs the thematic trajectory of the dual release. 'Dream Loss' is the first album and is a collection of older songs, while 'Alien Observer' is mostly made of newer songs. Each is meant to stand solidly on its own, and also as a satellite in the other's system, subjects on either side of t…
Folk XII
FOLK XII" was born as a CD re-edition of Militia's - a band from Perugia, Central Italy - debut release (a four tracks EP entitled "Folk II" released by Contempo in 1985), but also, as the title aptly suggests, as a new reading of that work with the help of modern technology (which produced a partial remixing and remastering by the musicians themselves) and its integration with unreleased tracks that were left aside until today. That 12", althought still immature, was favorably received by the p…
Emotional Planet
Chris Rose's Robust Worlds has impressed us since first glimpse. He was actually barefoot, if you can believe that, and his set had the feel of a way more lysergic Kevin Ayers. It was freezing fucking cold and I'm pretty sure he wore a Hawaiian shirt. His debut LP is called Emotional Planet, and it's deceptively simple. Voice, guitar, some noisy shit, whatever. His playing is sick: fluid, unforced, warm, soothed and soothing. It's a bath you don't want to exit. Seriously, if yr going to play gui…
Secede
These recordings were made as part of a proposed file-sharing collaboration with Austrian sound artist Helmut Schfer. The recordings were abandoned after Schfer's death in April 2007 but largely due to his original interest and enthusiasm, newly-recorded sections were added, with the final edits and mix completed later that year. Schfer does not appear on these recordings, but the final tracks have been completed with the initial discussions for the collaboration very much in mind. Improvised an…