New Arrivals
Mimikry
Having nicely set up the release of this album with their Ret Marut Handshake EP a few months back, Alva Noto and Blixa Bargeld (of Einsturzende Neubauten fame) deliver a set that exceeds all expectations. One of the most strikingly obvious comparisons to arise from that first batch of material was the Alan Vega/Pan Sonic collaboration, yet Mimikry goes much further than combining the established aesthetics of its constituent parts and creates something that actually feels very new. Car…
Repo
The frazzled and fractured electronic rhythms of Brooklyn noisemakers Black Dice are bent into shape once again on this fifth studio album from the band. The album, titled Repo, is comprised of home recordings and sessions from New York’s Rare Book Room studios. It’s another fine example of Black Dice’s singular aesthetic, which has been carefully honed through years of equipment abuse in low rent venues, art galleries and other improvised performance spaces. The record comes with a 20-page book…
Allegory Of Allergies
RESTOCKED! april 2009 release: deluxe reissue of emeralds long o/p august 2007 gods of tundra tape, a production-value-heavy edition consisting of two lps (each in their own metallic-ink inner sleeve) housed inside a full-color stoughton gatefold sleeve ; yowza ...for many the original cassette release was the one that made emeralds’ unique combination of stasis-heavy analogue synth wave-shifting stick (certainly was the one that “did it” for me) ; this majestic record-object does everything to …
This Way / The Shivering Man
Special vinyl set collecting the first two incredible solo albums from Bruce Gilbert - not to be missed* In 1979, after completing their third and final group masterpiece, 154, Wire dissolved, leaving Bruce Gilbert and fellow traveller Graham Lewis free to explore their interests in minimalist electronics across a series of solo and collaborative projects. Originally released on Mute in 1984, 'This Way' was Gilbert's first solo album and was primarily made up of work commissioned by choreographe…
The Unexamined Life
Supreme Dicks put out one single in their career. It was a double B-side. Maybe they had a sense of humor, but in hindsight it's hard to tell.Falling somewhere between Captain Beefheart, Throbbing Gristle and SALEM in the lineage of musicians who've found a muse in the nasty, brutish brevity of life, Supreme Dicks chose to cloak disarmingly real paranoia and grief in the contemporary trappings of late '80s and early '90s lo-fi college rock. They may have inhabited the same sonic and physical spa…
Hexadecagon
The Octopus Project as a performance piece meant to bring the audience into a world of total sound and image submersion, Hexadecagon is now an album. The special vinyl version of the album is a bit complicated, so I’ll let the band explain: “The vinyl is a gatefold double LP spanning three sides. The fourth contains several unique tracks unavailable on any other format, interlaced in concentric spiraling “roulette grooves,” so that the listener never knows which track they’ll get when they pu…
Family album
Double hybrid LP: One LP on black vinyl and one LP on clear fuchsia vinyl and picture disc artwork on the back side (first time!). "Of all the records I got from 2000 to 2010, a coupla by Second Family are among my fav... they remind me a bit the good old Sunburned Hand of the Man (or at least that tradition) but of course, with their own unique sound. Anyway, I wrote them... Tony kindly sent me stack of stuff... I selected & compiled a few things and they kindly agreed without exception. …
\"The Vodoun Effect\" 1972-1975
Most Likely To: be one of the only albums you hear that will protect you from the smallpox virus. In the late 1960s, as traditional African culture rubbed up against an influx of Western influences, some of the most amazing modern musical forms birthed in the dance halls of West Africa. Rhythm and blues, soul, and funk elements electrified and popularized in the United States folded back upon themselves into their African origins. Afrobeat reigned supreme in Nigeria, a defiant and jubilant funk …
Weight / Counterweight
"Recorded in April of 2008, Weight/Counterweight, the new release by Bill Dixon marks his return to small group playing, his first trio since the Dixon/Taylor/Oxley Victoriaville recording. The group, assembled by Hall at Dixon's suggestion, marks a new direction in Dixon's instrumentation with no untreated trumpet whatsoever and a barrage on pitched and unpitched concert percussion creating landmark skeletal architecture which Dixon pushes out from into unmediated solos of gravity and we…
Life...The Best Game In Town
After releasing several albums in the 90s, Harvey Milk are celebrating their own renaissance by lauding the virtues of "Life...The Best Game In Town". Spearheaded by the alternately burly and angelic vocal stylings of Milk mastermind Creston Spiers, "Life" is both tumultuous and grueling, resonating with the glorious slow-motion radiance of Total Dirge Power. They've since been joined by Thrones legend Joe Preston.
Spiritual Jazz 3: Europe
Gatefold double LP version. Esoteric, modal and deep jazz from the European underground, 1963-1972. At the end of the '50s, Miles Davis' Kind of Blue heralded the revelatory arrival of modal jazz. As the vibrations of these giant steps resonated across the world, European jazz musicians reassessed their bearings and began to steer a new course. Across the continent, they sent roots down into the rich soil of the European folk and Christian liturgical traditions, extended their music along a…
Black Tar Prophecies Vol 4
While Grail’s studio records are expertly crafted affairs, full of expert production and cinematic flair, but the Black Tar Prophecies series has been the set of songs which has brought Grails to the forefront of the instrumental scene. Lo-fi and bared back, it gives the band a place to experiment outside of the norm. Volume 4 of the Black Tar Prophecies series utterly drips in dark atmosphere; opener I Want A New Drug starts with a tape recording which slowly descends into warbling, becom…
No Victoria
The Nihilist Spasm Band (John B. Boyle, John Clement, Bill Exley, Murray Favro, Art Pratten, Aya Onishi) + Sun Plexus 2 (Laurent Berger, Sébastien Borgo, Rémy Bux). Limited edition of 300.
On fire
Norway's Smalltown Supersound label is just one of those imprints that you have to keep an eye on, because if not you're sure to miss out on some nugget of psyched avant-metal or North European disco that you'll be kicking yourself over neglecting in 10 years time. 'Smalltown Supersound On Fire' is a very handy and rather essential compendium of forthcoming releases on the label, including tracks from Arp, Meanderthals, Diskjokke and Tussle alongside remixes from the likes of Prins Thomas and Bj…
Palace of marvels (queered pitch)
Edition of 500. Composed by Marcus Schmickler. Recorded and Mastered at Piethopraxis, Köln. January-August 2010. Cut at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin, October 14th 2010. Artwork by Tim Berresheim. Marcus Schmickler's new release following his acclaimed 'Altars of Science' is a must have for those interested in the rising field of contemporary Computer Music. It reconfirms Schmickler's interest in the liaison of sound, phenomenology and cognitive sciences. Schmickler therefore utilizes a n…
Deutsche Elektronische Vol1
What's in a name? Good question. On first glance, Deutsche Elektronische Musik gives the impression that the pieces for Soul Jazz's new collection were selected for how they later fed into house and techno. But then there's that subtitle—"Experimental German Rock and Electronic Music 1972-83"—one which gently reminds listeners that much of the most fertile music from Germany in the '70s wasn't electronic at all. So why not Krautrock? Well, that doesn't quite work either: A title like that…
Personal Space Electronic Soul 1974 - 1984
Excerpts from the album. Now available at Experimedia.net. "If the independently-pressed record made the galaxy of recorded music that much larger, the burgeoning home studio became the black hole from which little escaped. Flowering in the mid-to-late '70s, affordable high-quality tape recorders, synthesizers, and simple drum machines permitted the aspiring artist to never leave his home, never request the assistance of another human being. In the world of American black music, name artists suc…
La Barca
Very Special double vinyl edition of Thomas Koner's 'La Barca' album - featuring a whole extra side/over 20 minutes of exclusive material never before available on any format, cut at Berlin's Dubplates and Mastering and pressed up in an edition of just 500 copies for the world. If you're a follower of Drone/Dark Ambient, and have admired the work of anyone from Deathprod to Rhythm & Sound to BJ Nilsen to Chris Watson to Angelo Badalamenti - this will blow your mind* There are few artists …
Reverse Atheism
Barbara Manning and S. Glass lead a small army of guest readers and musicians through barely musical versions of tunes, texts, and tracts. A survey of the exceptional, the eccentric, the feverish, and the pathologically peculiar within popular religious faith, to paraphrase William James, made by others, communicated by tradition, determined to fixed forms by imitation, and retained by habit. 70+ minutes of music fragments leached of melody and harmony, looped, hacked, noisified and depas…
Live in Germany, 1983
In some ways, Commitment was typical of many bands of their time. Between 1978 and 1984, they enjoyed a modest success by the subterranean standards of the Lower East Side. They struggled for gigs during the waning years of the New York loft scene, enjoyed higher profile gigs at several Kool Jazz Festivals, made one short European tour, and recorded one LP. But their music is more significant than this story might indicate. Hwang was among the first improvisers to emerge out of the Asia…