New Arrivals
Ecstasy & Refreshment
Further down the highway from last year's ace split with Roy Orb D.MT., Food Pyramid reach for lush neo Krautrock heights on 'Ecstasy & Refreshment'. They first break orbit with 'Dexedream''s stellar trajectory powered by twin-panned guitars and rocking rhythm machines to zones of swirling vocals, plateauing at the dreamy psych-house plains of 'Pacifier' and spinning dubwise with the corkscrewing, Ekoplekz-meets-Sun Araw-like scramble of Deep Fantasy'. Up there, the chiming African guitar chops …
Harmonie du Soir
Rhys Chatham's 'Harmonie Du Soir' presents three compositions. The title track is the first major piece written for the configuration of six electric guitars, electric bass and drums since Die Donnergtter (1986). The second is The Dream of Rhonabwy, a piece written for large brass ensemble and percussion, realized in 2012 by a 70-piece brass band called Harmonie de Pontarlier, lead by the French conductor Patrick Erard. The last track on the CD version and bonus download for the vinyl edition is…
Jack Allett / Kalbakken
"Relay I" is the first in Smeraldina-Rima's Relay Series. An artist for the A-side is chosen by the Smeraldina-Rima clan, after which the A-side artist decides upon who will get to fill the B-side. For every Relay 7" a different artist will be chosen to create the outside artwork. The A-side of "Relay I" fell to Jack Allett, the fingerpicking whirlwind formerly known as Spoono. Allett chose Kalbakken for the B-side. A great choice, Kalbakken, with its shamanistic folk, offers a great supplement …
s/t
"Marissa Nadler's Kickstarter funded self-titled self-release. Brian McTear produced the album, which Nadler says is the 'most honest, natural record' of her career." "You'll want this music to never end...best severe and complex emotions that we've possibly never recognized in this or previous lives." -- LA Weekly
Afro Noise I (Volume 3)
Dirter Promotions presents another volume of Cut Hands material, containing reworked and remastered versions of some tracks from his Afro-noise project. Comes in a beautiful special edition on 180 gram vinyl mastered by Noel Summerville and featuring the magical vévé artwork of Mimsy DeBlois, in a one-off pressing of 750 copies. The entire 750-limited pressings of Volume 1 and Volume 2 sold out on release day, so don't miss these! A reclamation of the conscious through 16 pieces (split betwe…
Hostile Environment
Bolder is Martin Maischein, who used to record as Heinrich At Hart on Position Chrome, and Peter Votava, also known as Pure, who has recorded previously for Mego and was half of Ilsa Gold. With their combined background in electronic music of all kinds, Bolder introduces a significant proposition to the current experimental electronic boom. Blurring the lines between industrial, techno, dub, ambient, and narrative forms, the work on Bolder's debut presents a dance amongst the abyss, a world wher…
Totaled And Stranded
Awesome release: recorded in a hotel room after we totaled out tour vehicle and became stranded in the worst snowstorm in Ohio history†Beatty, Connelly, Tremaine. Artwork: hand cutted black cardboard, Xeroxed recycled paper, raw paper inner sleeve. The B side is screenprinted by Serimal. Limited edition in 500 copies. A 1-sided album of piercing vocals, walls of guitars, precise heavy electronics and thundering drums. A fusion of metal, noise rock, free jazz, industrial, and harsh electron…
Backpages
Ron Morelli returns to stare down the 'floor with four pieces written during the stress-busting sessions for Spit (HOS 407CD/LP). The muggy, droning welt of "Public Consumption" kicks off with the sound of New York techno shot from the hip, while "Another Hit" vents a vintage era-Regis style built on skull-chipping snares and effluent acid modulation. The album's writhing batacuda banger, "Crack Microbes," reappears here as an extra-ferric extended "Version," sustaining the hypnotic intensi…
Soul music
Soul Music consists of six pieces built from monotonous percussion and bent analogue synthesizers. Pulse is central to these works. Taking inspiration from acid house, primitive trance music and 1960s downtown NYC minimalism, Soul Music is music from the skull of Joachim Nordwall. This is his soul music, and its path is circular, rhythmical and intense. Joachim Nordwall runs the iDEAL Recordings label. He is a founder member of The Skull Defekts and also plays with Alvars Orkester and Oceans of …
Orchestre Sidi Yassa De Kayes
After the 1960 independence, the Orchestre Regional de Kayes was founded in order to reinvigorate the local cultures from the Mand and the Kasso regions and turn some traditional themes into modern songs. Under the guidance of bandleader Harouna Barry, they evolve as one of Mali's finest orchestras. In the early 1970s, like most modern bands of Mali, the orchestra evolved into the Sidi Yassa de Kayes, named after Sidi Yassa, a late great singer. In 1977, they release one eponymous LP in 1977 on …
Body issues
Patricia's warm, fuzzy post-techno-house slots neatly with the Opal Tapes aesthetic on his debut album, 'Body Issues'. Six tracks come off like a boosted 1991 or Huerco S, pushing malleable bass hits below swirling streaks of melody bursting with ferric quality. There's firm parallels to be made here with Anthony Naples, albeit with a noisier bent in 'Hissy Fit', whilst on 'Melting' juicy acid forms over a brittle jack track and the sweet-but-slamming 'Jospehine' and 'Plural' appear like some GH…
Scarcity
During drummer Paal Nilssen-Love's July 2013 solo gig at Auido Rebel's Quintavant in Rio de Janeiro Brazil, he was joined on stage by Arto Lindsay performing on electric guitar and voice. The result is this 180 Gram LP, one side at 33 RPM and one at 45 RPM presenting two improvisations from these powerful improvisers. Of the performance Nilssen-Love writes: The gig was organised by the guys running Audio Rebel i Rio... fantastic guys who's also musicians. Gig was amazing and we we're both drench…
Corporate Laughter
Debut CD from one of Chicago's finest modular synth manipulators, Neil Jendon. One of the first things that struck me about Neil's work, when I saw him live, was his pacing. Neil would subtly build levels and layers of various oscillations, frequencies, and tones so deftly that by the time he was sending a hailstorm of electronic chaos out of the PA like buckshot, you almost had no recollection of how he got there without you being aware of it. 'Corporate laughter' reflects many of Jendon's fant…
Spectral life
Debut LP of one third of avant drone metal outfit Locrian. Contemporary artist / musician Terence Hannum is back on wax with two side of meditative and sonic cathartic noise torrents. Following on a dozen of highly regarded solo tapes and cdr, Spectral Life follows the artist through 2 tracks of electronic and acoustic drones blending in the most efficient way all the previous works of the artist. While the A side is made of short different synth-driven pieces blended together in an immense open…
Apophenia
Belgian/Italian duo Andrea Taeggi and Koenraad Ecker isolate a diffuse mixture of techno and concrète noise with 'Apophenia' for Opal Tapes. Building on the decayed structures of last year's 'Contrapasso' album, their latest blends the chaotic virtues of their improvisational approach with a more premeditated logic, manifesting five arcane constructions balancing abstract expression and rugged, grooving purpose. In that sense it works well alongside Opal Tapes' boss Basic House, but Lumisokea's …
Mimikry
2010 edition, long out of print, few copies resurfaced. Box Set, Limited Edition, Special Limited Box Edition - Album comes in a cardboard sleeve with tracks 11 and 12 as bonus tracks and as part of a box set including inserts. 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 …
Blank Generation
2013 repress. Exact repro vinyl version of the debut Richard Hell album, originally issued by Sire in 1977; 180 gram vinyl . "Hell formed the Voidoids, whose unwavering individualism kept the group out of the big time while producing a demanding and impressive corpus of work. 'I was saying let me out of here before I was even born.' That lyric sums up Hell's attitude, which he expanded and perfected on Blank Generation with a new version of the title track and such powerful statements as 'Love C…
Lalibela
Founded 40 years ago in 1972 The Pyramids released three albums before splitting up in 1977: Lalibela (1973), King Of Kings (1974) followed by the seminal Birth/Speed/Merging LP (1976). Three albums that made them one of the most mysterious and legendary of all the spiritual cosmic jazz collectives of the early 70s, like the Art Ensemble of Chicago and Sun Ra. Lalibela (1973) was the first album recorded by The Pyramids following their landmark journey throughout Africa as students from Antioch …
Broken iteration
The Japanese percussion player who lives in Europe has three fields of interest: 1, non-idiomatic improvisation (that includes idiomatic researches about it, or workshops on it). 2, electro acoustic composition. 3, plural disciplinary collaboration (with words, images, body movements etc) and it would seem to me that these four pieces here are a combination of 1 and 2. [] Murayama's playing is very minimal and we do recognize indeed the element of percussion instruments, and Murayama explores hi…
Ovenschotels
Both DT and JC have been sending eachother garbage and leftovers since a few years, sometimes almost nothing, probably out of pity, often to make eachother smile or as an act of friendship.Sharing the last spoon of cold soup on a cold winter night, when the heater does not want to be touched. these 36 pages are filth, with found imagery or buggles that the cleaning lady forgot to sniff out, images that have been dominating our seperate rooms for years and that remain unnoticed because of the dai…