New Arrivals
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…
Henzai
Tokyo-based guitarist/singer Hisato Higuchi presents his fourth full-length and first LP release. Henzai is Higuchi at his most bare. Each song appears like a spectral poem -- sewn together with hushed electricity and whispers. This recording is wholly intimate, recorded in seclusion, and washes over the listener like a hazy, day-break dream. Higuchi splits these 12 torch-songs between slow-motion improvisations and the composed, yet each is sung with a mix of beautiful wordless/Japanese languag…
Pachyderm
Revered, veteran guitar maverick, Michael Chapman of Cumbria, England, presents the hushed, radiant 24-minute improvisation 'Pachyderm', alongside an electronically tempered remix by Robert Antony. It's the 2nd in his more recent series of improvisations, making a move away from the structured songwriting much loved by the likes of John Peel, Thurston Moore and Jack Rose, to an absorbingly patient, simple and meditative style exploring the potential of a single ambient chord. Robert Anton…
The Hour Is Now
An excellent compilation of beautiful early 70s folk tunes from three LPs that that legendary acid-folk hippy-goddess Collie Ryan recorded in 1973, pretty much in Fahey/Basho vein
The Immeasurable Gift
The Immeasurable Gift is a testament to cathartic possibilities and the role of creation/release as a means of understanding. Recorded throughout the past three years in a variety of locations and personal moments; encapsulated by a common, unrelenting concern. Beautifully delicate, elegiac melodies concealed within curtains of dense electronic ambiance reveal themselves like the light at the end of the tunnel; a signifier of the temporary vessel form. Balancing recklessness with care and…
The Conjurer
This new long player finds the duo finally documenting something that is a bit closer to their very heavy live sets, w/ expanding peaks of white light distortion & enormous valleys of bottom end. Each side opens w/ a brief funeral dirge to set the mood, a precession of bare bones drum beats & bell like guitar statements that bridge the gap to the wider open spaces of the almost side long "Across The Desert Of Ash" & "Ancient Of Days."
Walking The Monkey
Billy Roisz is one of the best-known figures on the Austrian experimental scene. Active for over a decade as a video- and sound artist, she has collaborated with dieb13, Angélica Castelló, Burkhard Stangl, Silvia Fässler, Martin Brandlmayr, Toshimaru Nakamura, Mario de Vega, eRikm and Ilpo Väisänen. Her ability to translate experimental music into visual imagery is particularly noteworthy, revealing tactics borrowed from minimal and conceptual art. Walking the Monkey is her solo debut album…
Kappe
Limited Edition of 400 copies, already out of print: Erik Skodvin, the crown prince of nefarious Nordic doomscapes, returns with another incredible dark ambient grimoire for the Type label. Kappe finds the Deaf Center member peering yet deeper into the sonic abyss, concentrating his efforts on four lengthy compositions, each one following its own distinct subterranean tributary. 'Tunnel Of Love' opens the set with a blurry swell of dense tones and funereal howling before eventually throwing in a…
Only Stories
Latest from the uber prolific Aidan Baker, of mighty doomdronedirge duo Nadja, and as we've discovered in the past, Nadja is Baker's outlet for the heavier stuff, while working under his own name he tends to veer toward the minimal, ambient and drone side of the spectrum. So that's what we were sort of expecting from this, and while it definitely does lean more toward those sounds that the crush of Nadja, it's actually something else entirely, a solo acoustic record. That's right, just ac…
Split LP
Amazing!! There is a murder in the beach. Ducktails arrives in his spaceship escalade to investigate the scene. Dracula Lewis is the principal suspect. They become best friends and decide to work on a split LP. When a vampire kills a body is never found. At the same time beautiful and terrifying cavern drone sounds from Dracula Lewis, Psychedelic spiraling melodies and electronics beats from Ducktails. Both investigate the limits of the space time continuum. This is the new dawn of expansi…
Shaking, Waking
Clear Vinyl. Anyone who grabbed hold of the recent 'Alive in my Mouth' LP from ex-Baltimore trio Heavy Winged will know just how essential their tunes are. Made up of the classic bass, drums and guitar combo, the noise they generate is anything but predictable - the guitars rasp and drone, the bass bubbles and resonates and the drums rise and fall like tidal waves hitting a doomed continent. This is not your average white band, and 'Waking, Shaking' is possibly their finest release to date as th…
God Is Saying This To You...
More than a mere odds-n-ends collection, Kurt Vile’s latest LP is a compilation of tracks from Overnite KV, a tour-only CDR, along with a handful of extra tracks recorded specifically for this release. Here we find Kurt solo, four-trackin’ as usual, and blowing minds with his mix of bluegrass guitar, blazed singer-songwriterisms, and the knowledge of how to balance these contexts out with laidback precision. Psychedelic to its core, these twelve tracks speak to the will of the casual perf…
Assez de trop pas
Salmigondis is a collective (born in 2006) of musicians and graphist designers. Free rock, psychedelic, noise Ludovic Renaud (keyboard, turntables, electronics), Jean-Pierre Barja (bass, keyboard, electronics), Jérome Declercq (saxophones, keyboard, basse), Mathieu Renaud (guitar, electronics), Jean-Noël Cognard (drums,objects, voice). + some guests : Charlot (voice, percussion, flute), Philémon (sax, electronics), Eric Lewis (trumpet), David Khalifa (percussion), Etienne Foyer (drums). Recorded…
Teils teils
The first track of this is the side-long "Teilmenge 20," which begins as a set of indecipherable static electricity clicks that are quite warm and engaging, which quickly builds to a rhythmic cycle, continuing to mutate and diverge throughout the entire track. Most interestingly, as the rhythm sets in it truly begins to resemble a traditional 4/4 techno beat. The tempo and percussive elements are there, but the sounds in no way resemble the stale drum machines and overwrought synths. As the pi…
Enthronement By God As The First-Born Of The Dead
Project from Dominick Fernow of Prurient/Vatican Shadow and Kris Lapke of Alberich. "Released first as a limited 4 x cassette box set now condemned to vinyl. Among the trinity of electronic projects of Dominick Fernow's studies in anxiety and fear from the mythic natures of rainforest spiritual enslavement, the info wars of Vatican Shadow and the creator's observation of Christian Cosmos. Lightning drums pound the rhythms for lost souls as the fall from paradise abounds and the trumpets o…
Medusa’s Lair
Filleted over two sides of wax, here we have a rare meet up of three of the brightest lights in the Twin Cities’ musical orbit. On March 21, 2009, PAUL METZGER—best known for his transcendental gypsy raga guitar and banjo meditations—jumped in the ring with percussionist DAVU SERU and veteran multi-instrumentalist MILO FINE for an evening of uncompromising spontaneous composition. Medusa’s Lair is stunning, inscrutably wily, living music. One-time edition of 300 LPs pressed on 180-gram virgin vi…
Leaving The Commonwealth
D. Charles Speer & the Helix came together through a shared love of musical interplay that moves the mind and body. Born from the obsessions and predilections of David Charles Shuford, strains of glassine cruelty, broken glasses and ruptured knees mixed with memories of Chet Atkins lullabies and ZZ Top vids to generate a songcraft steeped in tradition but themed for the burned. A practicing multi-instrumentalist in various New York City improvisational ensembles for the last 15 plus yea…
Country Stash
By necessity, any conversation about the music of Matt Valentine (MV) and Erika Elder (EE) is eventually going to touch on their prolific output. The Vermont duo's constant production has simply become one of its defining facts. In addition to a steady stream of studio albums for Ecstatic Peace!, MV & EE have continued to release small-batch recordings on their own Child of Microtones label, including a Dick's Picks-style series of live recordings on the offshoot Heroine Celestial Agriculture su…
Time Building
I started making music in earnest in 1994 with a Casio keyboard and a four-track cassette recorder. Since 1996 I have been using a Korg MS10 analogue synthesiser and some effects pedals which I have added over time Ñ delays, phasers, a ring modulator and a pattern generator. Occasionally I use acoustic sounds as well. On this LP, I made extensive use of a pattern generator (a Moog Murf) in combination with other effects. Before recording anything, I spend time designing and shaping the sounds I'…
Thing
For fifteen years, Trans Am has forged a musical legacy that has consistently confounded those who would confine them to generic indie-rock labels and rather spoken for itself. Trans Am a-la 2010 is a band of veterans unafraid to contradict themselves, one that has grown stronger in its music and more confident in its identity over the course of now nine full length albums.