New Arrivals
A static place
Deluxe edition on double LP, an edition of 155 copies, individually inscribed and numbered, cear vinyl, 140g audiophile quality "Sourced from a mic’d gramophone playing 78rpm records from 1928 to 1932 with a cactus needle for a stylus, A Static Place has the more urgent, dynamic feeling to it. There is heavy use of hissing and layers of analog static to be heard on "Schwarzschild Radius", but it is used sparingly, burying processed choral arrangements and organ passages in its fuzzy warmth. Viny…
Lessness
Following in the tradition of minimalist composers such as La Monte Young, Yoshi Wada, and Charlemagne Palestine, Sun Circle exemplifies a contemporary focus on long form drone music. Members Greg Davis and Zach Wallace have shown their interest in the field most recently with extended works on Kranky and Root Strata respectively; together on Lessness, they show a deep-rooted interest in the power of simple forms. Building upon themes from their recent solo work (Davis’ subtly shifting tonal w…
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…
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.
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…
Your Naked Ghost Comes Back At Night
Double LP version. Originally released in 2004 on the Les Disques Du Soliel Et De L'Acier label and now reissued by Type, this is the debut release by On -- the collaborative duo of Chicago-based percussionist Steven Hess (Haptic, Pan American) and French composer/producer Sylvain Chauveau. The concept behind Your Naked Ghost... is simple: the duo record an album in the studio, and then place it in the hands of a third party. The resulting work is then "remixed" (for want of a better word) and t…
Just To Feel Anything
Just to Feel Anything, the new album by Emeralds, surpasses all expectations, just as its predecessor, Does It Look Like I’m Here, did in 2010. This expertly recorded new album sees the band deliver plenty of their distinctive aesthetic for old fans to enjoy while offering a new range of fresh, exciting ideas for newcomers. 'Before Your Eyes' begins the record with a steady build-up, which bleeds into humid layers of synthesizer pads and warm guitar. The track sets the tone perfectly for…
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…
Live Peace In Toronto
Limited edition, audiophile pressing, with original spiral bound 1970 calendar w/ photoLive Peace in Toronto 1969 is a 1969 live album recorded by John Lennon and Yoko Ono, as the Plastic Ono Band, at the Toronto Rock and Roll Revival festival. Lennon after being asked by local promoter John Brower if he and Yoko would accept an invitation to emcee the show on short notice instead decided to make his post Beatle debut at this festival. Featuring Eric Clapton on guitar (fresh from the breakup of …
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…
Second Original Silence
Thurston Moore, Jim O'Rourke and Mats Gustafsson last convened for the monumentally noisy Diskaholics Anonymous LP, Weapons of Ass Destruction. Now the trio have returned to Smalltown Superjazz for yet more sonic carnage, this time joined by ace drummer Paal Nilssen-Love, guitarist Terrie Ex and bassist Massimo Pupillo. There's a tremendous breadth to the kind of ground covered by these musicians. At no point do you feel as if the ensemble is running out of ideas or stagnating on one particular …
Bag It
double Vinyl edition with additional tracks: The Thing with Mats Gustafsson, Ingebrigt Haaker-Flaten and Paal Nilssen-Love covering 54 Nude Honeys, The Ex, Duke Ellington and Albert Ayler, intense modern improv. Swedish reed-chewer Mats Gustafsson is probably bored to tears by now by the Brötzmann comparisons that so regularly greet his work with the Thing. Even so, the elder German icon remains a central pillar of reference, most noticeably through a gnarled horn language that balances mach…
808s & Dark Grapes II
The internet can be blamed for many things, and while the current consensus seems to be that it is single-handedly responsible for the destruction of the music scene, it's impossible to deny the influence it has had on contemporary rap music. Previously held hostage by industry moneymen, file sharing and social networking has democratized the genre and allowed people to hear what's really going on in the minds of young producers and rappers. Main Attrakionz are one such cottage industry ma…
Mali: essential recordings of Carnatic bamboo flute (1969-1970)
Gorgeous double gatefold issue of two crucial albums by "the greatest living flutist of South India", T.R. Malingham or Mali to millions of South Indians, presented in respectfully opulent stye by Japan's EM reissue imprint. This is meditative, spiritual, and exotic music of the highest order, combining his two most revered recordings from 1969 and 1970 over two very special discs. Mali is said to be able to commune with birds via his playing and that's quite understabable. His virtuoso u…
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. …
On Patrol
Gorgeous double LP version "If a tree falls in a forest and no one's around, shit still gets crushed. If Cameron Stallones holes up solo-style in a suburban cave and wah-riffs over canned bongos for five straight months, double LPs still get dropped. These are basic life laws. The latest from Mr. Araw is easily his least compromising audio self-portrait to date. Three minute rhythm sketches are stretched into ten minute loop pedal odysseys. Organ solos last for entire vinyl sides. Ambiguou…
Live At Praxis 1984
Decades before his time, political and musical revolutionary, Sun Ra, developed a new plane of cultural existence where black people were all-powerful beings from outer space, sending their intergalactic message through jazz music. Recorded live in 1975 at Cleveland's legendary jazz club, the Smiling Dog Saloon, when Sun Ra and his Arkestra descended on the city for a week-long residency. You can imagine how the uninitiated's jaw must have dropped when Ra and his 15 musicians marched out onto th…
Tidings / Amethyst Waves
Mark McGuire has been a member of triadic mega-unit Emeralds since their inception. Besides contributing to their ever growing catalogue, he's also worked with Daniel "Oneohtrix Point Never" Lopatin as Skyramp and a prolific number of other solo projects. His most recent album for Weird Forest (originally released on Cassette by the Wagon label) has been hailed as his most definitive to date, crossing astral lines and psychedelic boundaries between noise squalls, lush-out synth washes and …
ØØ Void
Double LP edition: Lengths of stretched distortion rattle the grey matter, unnervingly slow and severe. With Sunn O)))’s second album, ØØ Void, the sonic misery nurtured to functionality by Greg Anderson and Stephen O’Malley stays simple and repetitive, a tabula rasa having yet to realize the full scope of its potential. With this album, Sunn O))) worked as a three-piece, collaborator Stuart Dalquist coming up with its opener, “Richard,” which is a solid fourteen and a half minutes of be…
Aleph At Hallucinatory Mountain
Aleph At Hallucinatory Mountain is the long-awaited new album from Current 93 and their first album in three years, following on from their double-platinum-selling album Black Ships Ate The Sky, and is released on David Tibet's new label Coptic Cat.Aleph At Hallucinatory Mountain is the most unique, most unpredictable and most powerful album yet from Current 93. David has brought together an amazing and bizarre array of talents from artists as varied as Nurse With Wound's Stapleton and Liles, ro…