New Arrivals
Against the Day
Since Sam Shalabi enjoyed his mini-breakout in 2004 with the Shalabi Effect's The Trial of St. Orange, the Montreal composer has explored the overlap between popular Western music and traditional Middle Eastern musics, particularly those from Egypt, the country from which Shalabi's parents hailed. These projects tend to be diffuse and ambitious: Shalabi works with dozens of musicians on long, brash drones, or plays meditative oud pieces in comfy theaters. Land of Kush, …
Introducing
The Drag City / Galactic Zoo team delve deeply into the recesses of private press obscurity once again, further revealing the underbelly of American music's recorded history - this time the little known songwriter Ryan Trevor is in the spotlight, who released just one incredibly rare, homespun LP (this one, if you're wondering) which surfaced originally in 1977. Not much is known about Trevor, though the guys at Drag City bill him as a "loner genius", whose work is to be filed somewhere between …
Group: Xex
Xex were an all-synthesizer band from South River, New Jersey who recorded their debut album group:xex in 1980. Formed when a trio of high school misfits with funny names (Waw Pierogi, Thumbalina Gugielmo and Alex Zander) teamed up with some friends from Rutgers CollegePerformed entirely on then-state-of-the-art Arps, synths and electronic drums – no guitars anywhere – group: xex aims for the future, but comes across now like a time capsule from the deepest, darkest Reagan years. Each song burro…
Rising above
one breathless long track, where you'd hear a mesmerizing Virginia's solo in a Rolando Kirk style, playing soprano and tenor in unison. back to the roots Recorded in October 2009, ultra limited 99 copies only
A Year In The Kingdom
Since Joshua Tillman had his profile raised by association with Seattle folk favourites Fleet Foxes, whose drumsticks he wields, he hasn't exactly been making an attention-seeking racket in his solo career. In contrast to Fleet Foxes' dawn-chorus harmonising, Tillman favours a spare style, and his sixth solo album may be the year's most subdued record. "I possess a taste for blood. I have numbered mankind's days," the 28-year-old murmurs on "There Is no Good in Me", throwing in a reference to fi…
Kokning
"Norway's Bjorn Torske returns with his fourth studio album 'Kokning'. Opening on a playful note with a slow-building title track, Torske strums a lone acoustic guitar against a background of shimmering synths setting the scene for a highly engaging piece of work. Throughout the course of the album a wide palette of genres are taken in and adapted to the Skrangle-House style (an open ended take on house music stemming from the Oslo nightclub 'Skansen'), and dub looms large over much of the music…
La Bamba
Over 15 years ago Daniël de Wereldvermaarde Botanicus (hat and cacti collector Cassis Cornuta) deejayed a ton of horrible la bamba versions for 2 hours in the now defunct situationist radioshow RTVS (Radio Centraal-Antwerp). The 'galdezen' of RTVS yelled-sung along, creating their own versions of la bamba while getting more and more hammered or naturally gone from a bamba trance! After telling me this short story Daniël mumbled 'I always wanted to dj all night long la bamba, I think it will driv…
Tortoise
Sold out on vinyl for many years the 1994 self-titled debut from Tortoise is finally back! This 2012 edition has been remastered to vinyl by Roger Seibel at SAE Mastering. The packaging emulates the original with a chipboard jacket that was custom silk-screened by Dan Macadam at Crosshair in Chicago. Also included is an insert and a free download coupon.
United World In Outer Space
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…
Rocket Ship Rock
Norton recently took a rocket ride into the vaults of El Saturn Research and arrived back on Earth with a motherlode of unissued early R&B, doo wop, soul and general weirdness featuring Sun Ra and his Arkestra backing a variety of artists. This series consists of two albums of Doo Wop from Saturn and Beyond entitled Interplanetary Melodies and The Second Stop Is Jupiter plus a set of totally twisted sides called Rocket Ship Rock featuring Yochanan 'The Outer Space Vocalist' (with his demented Sa…
C-Section
British free jazz phenomenon Evan Parker with electronic and tape noise artist John Wiese in a set of real-time evolving improvisations intended for maximum volume. Vinyl version of the CD released earlier this year, but slightly different containing all the final mixes and edits of the sessions with a new and more intense mastering for the maximum listening experience. C-Section finds density in scarcity - deep, glacial muck bubbles emerge beneath Parker's inhuman circular breathing, only to pl…
Space Programs
When the shoe drops on the first bars of the USA is the Monster's new full length, it becomes clear some changes have occured since the last record, Sunset at the End of the Industrial Age. Buttery synth and elaborate vocal harmonies combine to levitate hairpieces at least a wee bit. This is the perfect synthesis of the pastoral wanderings circa thier second full length record, Wohaw, and the punk spunk junk of their first and third full lengths. The band is still a New York two-piece tribe of N…
Alignment
Incredible, seemingly out-of-left-field debut release from tashi wada, a west coast composer perhaps best known as the accomplice / son of yoshi wada ...a gorgeously executed display of upper-harmonic-series movement & the psycho-acoustic properties of carefully controlled tuning systems (a medal has assuredly already gone out to violinist marc sabat for his performance here ; channeling the painstaking adherence to micro-tonal accuracy of phill niblock’s music ... only in a real-time, live-play…
Patience
LP version with free downloadable MP3s. Patience is both appropriate and inappropriate as a title for the latest release by The Dead C. Inappropriate because its been only two years since the last album, which in Dead C Time is but the flicker of a candle; appropriate since the key to enjoying the Dead C is willingness to sit down, listen and let the music take over your mind. With an unforgiving and intense four tracks, Patience will not be confused with the work of any other band.' label info
Voice of the Seven Thunders
Already drawing comparison to the heyday of '70s acid rock & the likes of Amon Duul II, Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac, Japan's Flower Travelin' Band, early Pink Floyd, the Velvet Underground's drone jams, the electronic kosmische of Cluster & the unhinged organic grooves of International Harvester
Sentinelle
Inspired by the likes of the largely unknown first wave of continental European minimal electronic bands of the early ‘80s (Absolute Body Control, Twilight Ritual, Martin Dupont, Snowy Red), the seminal early industrial bands, as well as the emphemeral, psychedelic atmospheres of the British shoegaze bands of the 1990s, Xeno and Oaklander perform using entirely analogue synthesizers, sequencers, and drum machines to produce a highly-crafted, complex of form of moody, electronic pop music that is…
Englabörn
Upon setting out to score the music for the play Englaborn by Havar Sigurjonsson, Johann Johannsson, co-founder of the Icelandic arts organisation Kitchen Motors, came upon a text by the Latin poet Catullus which roughly translates as, I hate and I love. Why do I do it, you might ask? I dont know, but I feel it happening to me, and it's tearing me apart. This poem concisely bridges the emotional opposites which clashed within the play itself. As the play's content was extremely violent and distu…
Netsu
As Takaaaki says, this is NOT usual Dubstep. He makes it evolve to a new Dubstep, with a heavy, dark and aggressive side, clinging to the bass and various BPMs, but some harmonies and even hints of melodies take all these sounds to a new level, creating a mutant Dubstep that hypnotizes the listener and takes him to lunar seas or snowy landscapes. But be aware that with Takaaaki decadence and crazyness are never far and Netsu might give you fever very quickly.
Cymbals
restocked, but very few available...LP art edition of 310 numbered copies, recorded on 1973, NEVER previously issued on vinyl, this is a jewel from saturn: try to find it in the cosmo if you can. This albums originally intended for release by Impulse! in the early 1970s, Cymbals is very a much a continuation of efforts like The Night of the Purple Moon, with an overall extended sax workouts, and built out with plenty of welcoming grooves. An highlight from a fertile period when Sun Ra and his…
Maru Sankaku Shikaku
New psychic territorial landscapes the cosmic cartographer mapped yesterday before tomorrow. Acid Mothers Temple main man Kawabata Makoto links up with LSD March guitarist Michishita Shinsuke to create another amazing platter of fantastic sounds and vibes. Maru Sankaku Shikaku (Circle Triangle Square) finds the duo moving on from the electric guitars of their previous duo releases to an all acoustic album featuring ethnic instruments from around the globe. Two side long pieces mesh drone music w…