New Arrivals
Il Giardino Ermeneutico
The third collaboration with Zeit displays a wonderful and unique combination between acoustic sounds, field recordings and airy gentle electronic sounds.The sonic result maintains the natural atmospheres of the originalacoustic recordings, done at the time of the Raag drone theory's sessions in Lunigiana, Italy at Chiostro dell’Annunziata and the Wood Sanctuary in August 2006. Here the treatments enriche the mixture with a new sensible touch that subtly transports the listener towards anen…
Box music
Rutger and Stephen sort of accidentally met through e-mail. A simple note regarding an ordering question for a CD led to an enthusiastic e-mail conversation and climaxed in a musical collaboration. This all happened in a very short period, both musicians being very inspired by the concept of “exchange,” as a means to cross space and time -- Rutger living in the Netherlands and Stephen in Virginia.
Most of the time, when (electronic) musicians work together it’s a matter of swapping digital files…
We Are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace & Magic
In May 2011, Foxygen's Sam France and Jonathan Rado nervously handed off a CD-R of their homemade mini-opus Take the Kids Off Broadway to producer and visionary Richard Swift after his performance in a Lower East Side club. The duo, who had just mixed and burned the disc that very night, had been devotees of Swift's outsider-pop oeuvre since high school, when they first began recording their own pubescent forays into oddball rock n' roll (At least a dozen records were finished before they …
Clear and Not Clear
Another due reissue of valuable New Wave materials “Made In Italy” that stretches around thirty-seven tracks contained on a double CD. Bi Nostalgia was the solo project of Luca Rigato, already part of the duo Endless Nostalgia. Composed and recorded between 1984 and 1987 (with the addition of one more recent unreleased track), all songs have been completely remastered from the original master tapes of "Anthems for Losers", "Dances of the Pessimism", "The Seeping Mouth”, “Cathedrals EP","Art Is N…
Book Of Nods
A new landscape is painted out of darkness by progressive strokes of the dawn. The finished piece is neither night nor day, but the transformation itself. Aidan Baker's (Nadja) "Book Of Nods" crests experimental peaks in similarly paced sonic transmigrations. His lustrous chimera blooms open in shifting onion layers built out of slow-moaning guitar, flute, organ and drums. The resonant frequencies of quietly crashing nodes vibrate the ozone with a sub-textural beating of multi-pianic fea…
We Who Had Left
Necks pianist Chris Abrahams teams up with electronic artist and sound artist Alessandro Bosetti for six introspective and mysterious tracks that mix Necks like progress with ambient electronics and curious monologs, and one waltz.The piano recital format number one: a pompous italian tenor, his round belly almost exploding inside his tuxedo, stands beside the gigantic grand piano, holding a hand on it while protruding forwards. Outside the stage, an imaginary oceanic audience is seated on hundr…
Sol Sketches
Film director Chris Teerink asked me to make the soundtrack for a documentary he would be making about American artist Sol LeWitt. This was in 2009. Chris and I agreed that the music and the images should both be equally important in his film. We didn't want the score to overpower the images, but neither did we want it to become solely background 'muzak'. I searched for a certain openness in the sound, while at the same time keeping a directness to it. Musical references for me were the piano pi…
Homage To Giacinto Scelsi
Awesome compilation in a limited edition of 300 hand-numbered copies. With Sébastien Roux / Eddie Ladoire, Rafael Toral, Elio Martusciello, David Toop, Terry Day, Matt Davies, Skoltz / Kolgen, Scanner, KK NULL, Alvin Curran, Efzeg, Eddie Prevost / John Butcher, Lawrence English, Rhodri Davies / Joe Williamson / Stefano Tedesco, Olivia Block...."We, the 'kids' (whowe?) should listen more to classical music. At least that's what Deutsche Grammophon wants, since they want us to buy their CDs. B…
Lost Prayers
Originally released in a tiny pressing of just 200 CD-Rs by Digitalis Industries, this early James Blackshaw release is brought back in print by the Tompkins Square label, who on the back of last year's 'Cloud Of Unknowing' are intent upon reintroducing the guitarist' back-catalogue to his growing legion of fans (of whom there is almost certainly more than 200). 'Lost Prayers And Motionless Dances' is a single thirty-five minute composition, opening with droning harmonium passages and only…
EARR plays a Snare is a Bell
a Snare is a Bell is a solo piece for snare drum, voice and the room in which it is played.Inspired by some close encounters I had with African shamanic/trance musicians and my personal experiences with meditation and music, it also relates to a known-to-many-of-us acoustical wonder of sitting on the toilet and picking up the tone of that little room (often by accident while coughing or talking out loud to oneself) and enjoying to sing that tone and let the toilet become filled with an eno…
Tasogare: Live in Tokyo
Recorded live on April 10th and 11th, 2010, Tasogare: Live in Tokyo documents the performances of five 12k artists at two temples in Tokyo, Japan. Komyoji Temple (April 10th) saw the first-ever performance in Japan by Australia’s Solo Andata, known for creating deep, textured music with found objects, homemade instruments and very little in the way of electronics or software tricks. The duo was joined by 12k veteran Sawako whose voice and delicate computer work were accompanied by guitarist Hofl…
Castings
The title of Fern Knight’s 2006 release, Music for Witches and Alchemists, served simultaneously as a wonderfully apt description and an unambiguous product warning. If you prefer the mundane to the magical, move on: These are not the druids you’re looking for. Since then, the group has relocated to Arlington from Philadelphia, and while Fern Knight’s music evokes far-away times and places, it turns out the band fits in nicely with the D.C. area’s musical history—assuming you can stomach …
Bruder Luzifer
23 Track CD Anthology. For three decades Hamburg's Felix Kubin operated as an undercover Sci-Fi pop visionary. Lurching from seasick electronics to dramatic outsider songcraft, the highlights of Kubin's engaging teenage experiments (Krematorien) and later pop masterworks (Lightning Strikes) mingle here with electrified spaghetti-western romps (Sabàta) and terminal noise-spasms (Dead End Brain). Lovingly curated, this deluxe collector's edition features exclusive liner notes, unpublished p…
Ethnic Expressions
Easily one of the most coveted and sought-after of all jazz LPs is the elusive Holy Grail that is Roy Brooks' Ethnic Expressions. It's not just rarity that makes a record of this nature so desirable, nor is it the compelling music within -- sometimes, like a Van Gogh or a Picasso, it's the personality of the artist himself that's inexorably entwined with the record itself that lends a fascinating, mesmeric and mythical quality that simply can't be contrived. The sixth release in Jazzman's …
The Ominous
Jacob is the new project by David Cordero (Úrsula) and Marco Serrato (Orthodox). The duo first collaborated on the arrangements that would become the Emma soundtrack. With a mutual love for sci fi and horror films, Jacob push their dark sonics further on The Ominous, a piece for el cine de la mente. Atonal, dissonant string scrapes meld together in discomforting walls of noise, while hidden forces project an ambiguous malignance lurking in the deep fog. Bleak atmospheres and an abyss of s…
Out of the past
'Featuring Derek Bailey on electric guitar and Steve Noble on drums & cymbals. Recorded in a London studio in February of 1999 and not released until now.'
Our Prayer
Another previously-unreleased gem from South African pianist/composer Chris McGregor and his cohorts in '60s UK free jazz. Our Prayer was culled from the same sessions that produced the also never-released Up To Earth in 1969 and was produced by Joe Boyd and engineered by John Wood at Sound Techniques studio. The previous year they had signed to Joe Boyd's illustrious Witchseason production company alongside Fairport Convention, John and Beverley Martyn, Nick Drake and the Incredible String Ba…
Class Insecta
One of the pioneers of laptop electronics, Ikue Mori has been breaking new ground on the musical frontier for three decades. From her early days in the landmark no wave band DNA, to her years as a regular in the downtown improvisation community and more recently as one of the epicenters of the international laptop electronic scene, Ikue has become an underground hero -- yet her work is still sorely underappreciated. This newest solo CD features Ikue's idiosyncratic take on contemporary dance rhy…
Stanze
In his interpretation of the music from Osvaldo Coluccino, Alfonso Alberti takes us by the hand to lead us part of the way through our innermost being.What we hear seems like fractured piano music, like notes and sounds scattered in space: in his “Stanze,” Osvaldo Coluccino uses the piano’s resonant body to generate resonances in the spaces within us. He removes the windows, eliminates all opulence, and confronts us with environments that lie within ourselves. The light and the dimensions keep c…
Glennascaul
A high point in Konstruktivist's career, "Glennascaul" was originally released on Nigel Ayers' Sterile Label in 1985. Produced and mixed by Chris Carter of Throbbing Gristle, it marked a complete change in style for the band towards a beat-orientated rhythmic sound. "Glennascaul" is proto electro at its very best, with Glenn Wallis's unique vocal style on top. For this, the first ever edition on CD, we have remastered the or…