New Arrivals
Remains unchanged
The Shadow Ring was founded by guitar player Graham Lambkin and percussionist Darren Harris in Cheriton, Kent, England in 1993. Tim Goss joined the Shadow Ring in 1996 performing on a variety of electronics. The group disbanded in 2003. 'Remains unchanged' is the long-time-coming archival overview of the shadow ring. Spanning the full decade of their existence, 'Remains unchanged' offers an alternate account of the group's labor, told through 20 never-before-heard tracks. From the lumbering mono…
Neposlusno / Sound disobedience
Through several duos, a picture of improvised music in Slovenia. Tao G. Vrhovec Sambolec, computer & Vid Dra ler, drums, percussion. Andrej Fon, bagpipes, clarinet & Ana Kravanja, violin. Matija Schellander, double bass & Toma Grom, double bass. Samo Kutin, hurdy gurdy & Marko Jeni , violin. Andrej Fon, el. guitar, clarinet & iga Pucelj, feedback loops. Vid Dra ler, drums, percussion & Marko Karlov ec, alto saxophone. Vitja Bal alorsky, el. guitar, analog electronics & Bo tjan Simon, alto saxoph…
Line the clouds
Multi-faceted composer and performer Ashley Paul releases her new lp 'line the clouds', on brooklyn's rel records. a hyper-intuitive record, where off-kilter instrumentation meets beautifully crafted melodies to convey the very essence of 'musicality', 'Line the clouds' contains 44.18 minutes of sonic paradoxes and dichotomies. Stirring up a zephyr of twelve blissfully cacophonous sounds - singular moments of an indivisible whole the focus is on guitar, voice and saxophone, but Ashley also em…
Beaches Canyons
Debut album from NYC sound manipulation specialists, back in print on vinyl w/ download. Black Dice is an explosive, radical, and viciously unique rock & roll band. Based out of Brooklyn, NY, the trio is fiercely independent, doggedly disciplined, and uncompromisingly DIY in approach. Brothers Eric and Bjorn Copeland and Aaron Warren have spent over a decade recording, touring, and unleashing their bizarre musical doctrine on audiences the world over.By the time Beaches and Canyons made its reti…
NYC, Hell 3:00 AM
James Ferraro takes inspiration from "the things I see" in his 'NYC, Hell 3:AM' dystopia. The follow-up to 'Sushi' is a wry reflection of his locale, "a surreal psychological sculpture of American decay and confusion" evoking imagery of "rats, metal landscape, toxic water, junkie friends, HIV billboards, evil news, luxury and unbound wealth, exclusivity, facelifts, romance, insane police presence and lonely people... all against the sinister vastness of Manhattan's alienating skyline." Of course…
Inoculate ?
Instability between sound and silence, between stagnation and air pressure; or else digital phantoms, remanences of what has not occurred - and the live electronics that sculpt this matter. Instruments increased to excess or, to the contrary, reduced to the flimsiest breath, distorted and exploited by themselves as much as by the teeming immobility of the dancer, body to hear. A slowness always in imbalance with abrupt accelerations, a stasis filled with electricity, a wall of sound.
Second Breath
CD. Ken Vandermark, tenor sax, Paal Nilssen-Love, drums, Lasse Marhaug, electronics. Recorded live November 23rd 2011 at the Vortex, London UK by Mick Ritchie. Mixed by Lasse Marhaug. Produced by Fire Room. Artwork by Naiel Ibarrola.
Live from the Sahara
The Kel Tamasheq people of the Sahara respect an ancient social order of noble families supported by lesser nobles, craftsmen and former slaves. Noble princes never would pick up a musical instrument -- that was for the craftsman, the griot, the professional bard, or the lesser nobles. But all that has changed during the droughts and rebellions of the past 50 years. The whole social order has been challenged. In the 1970s, electric guitars appeared in the desert. Everything began to c…
Preplexure
John Oswald (Plunderphonics) returns with two fourteen-minute-plus tracks of sliced and diced audio assemblage. Pre and post versions of Plexure out in 1993 on Avant, 'PrePlex' (1982 - 1992) and 'Plexure concentrate' (1992 - 2009). Here some feedbacks: 'Highly recommended. Imagine playing Ôname that tune' at 5 times the speed of your ears' ability to recognize familiar sounds. This composition, made up entirely of pop music samples, deserves five stars because of its meticulous organizatio…
In Four Parts (Tribute To John Cage)
Equipped with a modular synthesizer, a guitar and electronics Patrick Pulsinger and Christian Fennesz approach the master of the treatment of silence, John Cage. The piece on this album, which was recorded live at Wiener Konzerthaus, was inspired by the underlying attitude of Cage’s String Quartet in Four Parts. Upon invitation by the WIEN MODERN festival the two legendary electronic music protagonists tackled the composer’s early string quartet, took it apart and adapted it for two players, alw…
Six & Six
Originally released in 1981, JANDEK'S second album stands as an incredible document of the formative stages of his cracked genius. The musical elements are almost catatonic: 9 songs drift by as a series of slight variations on several desolate, untuned acoustic guitar phrases. First time on vinyl in over 25 years. Old-style tip on jacket. LIMITED!
Sieve
As a duo Tim Catlin and David Brown aka Candlesnuffer come together as 'Helium Clench' and boast long histories in the Melbourne and international avant-garde music world. Both have independently developed a fascination with microtonal sound, in particular through Catlin's construction of harmonic overtone guitars and metal rod instruments tuned in just intonation, and in Brown's case through his explorations using the quartertone bass guitar. 'Sieve', their first duo recording is a stud…
Winds & Skins
Winds & Skins transpired to be the very last set of recordings made by Afro-Cuban percussionist Sabu Martinez, who sadly passed away precisely one month after this December 1978 session was committed to tape. The album draws a line under a career that saw the illustrious musician performing alongside Dizzy Gillespie and Art Blakey as well as releasing a string of out-and-out classic Latin jazz records. Here the noted conguero teams up with the lauded saxophonist/flautist Sahib Shihab, who himsel…
Oh
Roger's reigning post-Burma moment; basement 4-track recordings of unknown-tongue space psych, ecstatically rendered.
Ensemble Pearl
Double LP edition. Cosmic, heavy amplified rock drops and ripples, auras radiate and expand into cloud forms, through which lightning bolts. Tides rise, the moons wax upon a place somewhere between Link Wray, Hex-era Earth and early Tangerine Dream. The echoes return, leaving a trail that blows and drifts, creating a separate piece. Ensemble Pearl are Atsuo, William Herzog, Michio Kurihara and Stephen O'Malley. Their debut album also features the elemental forces of Eyvind Kang and Timba H…
Summer meeting 2013
Alexandros Drymonitis is an MMus graduate of the Conservatorium van Amsterdam. He studied guitar in Athens, Amsterdam and Berlin, specialising in contemporary music, and specifically in the co-operation between the composer and the performer. He attended composition classes in Athens and Amsterdam, plus several electronic music seminars and workshops. He has found his place in the field of free improvisation and noise art. Nikos Kyriazopoulos works on environmental recordings in a wide range of …
Twenty Systems
Twenty tracks made on 20 synthesizers spanning 20 years, accompanied by a 60-page color book with a foreword by Robin "Scanner" Rimbaud, Twenty Systems is Benge's acclaimed concept album, first released in 2008. His 10th solo album, this ambitious project combines an audio CD of new music with a hardbound full-color book containing photos and diagrams of the electronic instruments used, along with a detailed history documenting the development of synthesizers between 1968 and 1988. The purpo…
Divisionals
Mouthus are professionals. Not that their music is a full-time job, or is made out of obligation. Rather, Brian Sullivan and Nate Nelson approach every recording seriously and diligently, never bending their methods to fit expectations or pander to an audience. Often this devout methodology produces a glorious alchemy; other times it results in workmanlike exercises in sound excavation. But every Mouthus album comes with an implicit seal of quality craftsmanship. You may not find an epiphany in …
Fever Logic
Ensemble Economique has emerged as an unusually globe-trotting creative valve for Arcata, CA, beachcomber Brian Pyle. The last year alone has seen him backpacking through Scandinavia, Europe and Russia—twice. Maybe his spirit’s too absorbent, ’cause he’s brought back some deeply heavier moods and ancient world weariness since his last outing on Not Not Fun, 2010’s demonic tribal monsoon Psychical. Recent splits with similarly instinctual psychedelic unclassifiables like Lee Noble and Her…
Broselmaschine II
"Second chapter on the Bröselmaschine saga after a four-year hiatus. The band's second incarnation came to life in 1975, when Peter Bursch reformed the group together with old member Willi Kissmer and new recruit, Klaus Dapper (flute, sax, tuba). Helped by such honorable guests as Mani Neumeier and Roland Schaeffer (from Guru Guru) or Jan Fride from Kraan, their 1976 album was a solid session of progressive folk, very different than its predecessor but also with an atypically hypnotic and…