New Arrivals
Refuse This Gift
The third album Refuse This Gift from Bear Claw is one of two records that ended up being part of a double whammy of releases from Sickroom Records just recently for me. Paired up, at least in my mind, with the excellent Conformists record (which you can find a couple posts below) Bear Claw gives a bit more of a traditional spin on the Chicago math/noise-rock sound compared to their label mates. With their third album Refuse This Gift the band hasn’t deviated all that much from their pr…
For Pau Torres
Catalan musician Ferran Fages, known for his guitar work as much as his work with turntables and electronics, delivers here a striking album of evocative, nocturnal electric guitar explorations. Bracketed by two intricate pieces of feedback, the centerpiece of this work maps out a carefully constructed arc of a story, bringing this album closer to that often misunderstood soundtrack-for-a-movie-yet-to-be-filmed genre. Ferran Fages: electric guitar and walkie-talkie. Composed, recorded and mixed …
Chestnut Thornback Tar
As Norway’s premier noise troupe, Lasse Marhaug and John Hegre’s Jazkamer project has a certain status to uphold. Rather than resting on their well-earned laurels, Marhaug and Hegre keep a gruelling schedule of shows and an even more gruelling schedule of releases, which has culminated recently in an ambitious album-a-month series spanning throughout 2010. While the concept itself is now fairly well worn, what has astonished this time around is the sheer quality the duo has managed to ke…
Untitled (1959)
Track titles are from paintings by Mark Rothko. Ariel Shibolet (soprano saxophone), Aurora Josephson (voice), Jen Baker (trombone), Scott R. Looney (piano), Damon Smith (double bass). Recorded by Scott R. Looney, 8 January, 2006 at 1510 Studios, Oakland, CA, USA. Mixed by Scott R. Looney. Cover: five linocuts by Aurora Josephson.
Inner Voices/Nerve Language
"Karl Bauer and Eva Saelens (Axolotl and Inca Ore respectively) are two like-minded Bay area psychers operating on two opposing levels. Axolotl marks the A-side with skyward streaking drones and ethereal loops tinged and focused, ringing with the joyous bliss of upward passage. An endless array of vocals, electronics, and violin looping and looping, building and growing: stasis. Inca Ore makes her craft from an Earth-bound level. Oneness with her surroundings, roots firmly planted. Eerie incanta…
8
Another indispensable tome from Yeti publishing: 192 pages, featuring a brilliant Eliane Radigue interview, plus text on Harry Partch (with photographic accounts of the instruments he created), Bishop Perry Tillis, the late Southern American musician/producer Jim Dickinson, Explode Into Colours and Zola Jesus. On the maxed-out, 27-track CD you'll find rare or previously unreleased tracks from Vaselines, White Rainbow, Inca Ore, Pete Swanson, Little Claw and Ty Segall among a good many others.
Transfer/1: Departures
'Available now - the first release of the Transfer series, one of four seven inch singles by Andy Moor and Anne-James Chaton, based around the themes of transition and transportation, side A constructed from factual information and side B from fiction. Comes in a lush folded sleeve. 'Departures' takes us on a worldwide tour; The text material in 'Dernière minute' (side A) is based on information found on the French Foreign Office website, indicating the level of safety and current political clim…
Para Pacem Para Bellum
Para Pacem Para Bellum” is the first CD release with the great music of Svyatoslav Lunyov's. That serious, highly emotional and spiritual work is the result of two general methods of creating music: academic tradition (scores, acoustic instruments and playing of the real musicians) and the contemporary/experimental way (generating, synthesis, editing with computer tools). Needs to say that this electro-acoustic work combines the well-known traditional elements of the Requiem, Passions and the Ma…
Eerie Fragrance or Eyeless Fabrication or Exclude Frank or Eat F
A lovely vinyl reissue on Etude Records of a long obscure Climax Golden Twins gem. Originally issued in 1995, on cassette, Eerie Fragrance or Eyeless Fabrication or Exclude Frank or Eat Fuck or etc (forever) was Climax Golden Twins second official issue after a self-released double seven inch gatefold record. Cassettes-the cockroach of the industry-were a necessity at the poorer end of the music spectrum prior to CDRs and file sharing... the good old days... EF was a collage of noise, found soun…
Berlin Electronics
With Annette Krebs (electric guitar, mixing board, tapes, objects, radio) : 'Untitled III variation-extract' (2007). Gilles Aubry (computer programming) : 'Volutes I-III' (2007). Ignaz Schick (organ pipes, cymbals, objects, violin, turntable, looper and electronic treatments) : 'Frost I-IV' (2007-2008). Andrea Ermke (minidisc.mixing desk) : 'Verzegnis' (2008), 'Berlin' (2008).
Solo - Conversations with Franck Médioni
'The unique voice of double-bassist Joëlle Léandre moves back and forth between the worlds of theatre, poetry, dance, improvisation and composition. With passion and fire, she recounts her main sources of inspiration, encounters with John Cage, Peter Kowald, Giacinto Scelsi, Steve Lacy, Philippe Fénélon, Betsy Jolas, Derek Bailey, George Lewis, Anthony Braxton among others... CD: 38 minutes bass solo, Piednu, France, 2005. DVD: 33 minutes bass solo, Guelph Jazz Festival, Canada, 2009.' la…
Mining Our Bid'ness
A revelatory debut album by a 64 year old pianist/composer may beg the question: where has Carei Thomas been all this time? Born in a culturally diverse neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Thomas cut his musical teeth in Chicago during a particularly fertile period for that city: gigging with Sun Ra as an improvising vocalist in 1959-60, joining up with the AACM for one hot minute in 1966, co-founding a group called The L…
All Thumbs
Barcelona Chronicles N°02. Derek Bailey (solo electric guitar). A solo concert filmed in July 2004 on a hot summer afternoon on a rooftop of a private apartment somewhere in the narrow streets of the Ribera district. Directed by Andy Davies. DVD - PAL Format - All Zones - Worldwide Play. Running time 23:03.
Did You See?/Spectacular Of Passages
Two stunning exclusive tracks finally unleashed after (too many) years on the shelf, just in time to coincide with Samara's wonderful new album Future Slip on Thurston Moore's Ecstatic Peace! label. A sweet little dose of hushed and fragile melancholy folk-pop-drone fluttering. Samara's unmistakable slow-bliss songforms are at their most stripped down and psychedelically entwined, with thick hovering violin tones, distant reverbed atmospheres and gentle swirls of quivering guitar feedback all li…
Heartbreaker / Look At The People
Initially conceived in Louisville in 1978 from the ashes of two local punk bands by Tony Pinotti, Bruce Witsiepe (coming from No Fun) and Rik and Dave Letendre (coming from I-Holes), the band Circle X moved to New York soon after. They encountered there a young german painter, Ralph Neun, linked to the art school of Darmstadt. Ralph Neun was living in NYC for about a year, and decided to record a song evoking the city: Rolling Stones' 'Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker)'. Ralph Neun booked…
Alpha Z Centauris
'I started recording sounds when I was 17 years old, in 1984 when by chance someone gave me a K7 tape recorder with 2 diverse speeds... I discovered recording sounds was already a full and poetic act which was able to be used for the experimental music which i was dreaming of. In 1987, after one month of hard work in a summer camp restaurant I bought a 4-track stereo tape recorder and I started a lot of experiments in my little flat in Lyon (France) : via an old Radiola radio from the 50's, my h…
Metal Box
deluxe 3Xcd EDITION "Metal Box is the second PIL album and their masterpiece. One of these rare things that crosses the sky of rock from time to time. Formed by John lydon after the split of a well known band, PIL turns the back to the past : with cynicism. Exit the image shaped by Mc Laren, place to the music, a powerful funk carried by the hypnotic bass of Jah Wooble that sometimes evokes Holger Czukay of Can, striated by the minimalist riffs of Keith Levene (between James Blood Ulmer a…
Some Other Dream
Malcolm's latest release Some Other Time on Swedish label Kning Disk is an exquisite CD and DVD box set. Each disc features different compositions and improvisations that document Malcolm's work with solo simultaneously played multiple guitar performance (SSPMGP for short). Some Other Time continues Malcolm's journey with three guitars and a suitcase as he revisits and reworks material from previous releases including Homesick for Nowhere, Hung, Swimming in it and Leather and Lacy. The DVD was s…
Art Of Touring
Edited by Sara Jaffe (Erase Errata) and Mia Clarke (Electrelane), THE ART OF TOURING is a book of art, photographs, and writing reflecting life on the road. Beautifully printed on glossy paper, this 7-inch-square, 156-page book also includes a DVD of live footage.ART by Beth Murphy (Times New Viking), Julianna Bright (The Golden Bears), Devendra Banhart, Tara Jane ONeil, Nathan Jerde (The Ponys), Hannah Mae Blair, Jason Sanford (Neptune), Erika Spring Forster (Au Revoir Simone), Tony Lazzara (At…