New Arrivals
Capricorn Born Again
Amanda from Pocahaunted joins Robedoor for this first full-length as Topaz Rags, and the album's a real winner, kicking off with 'Darker Sooner' sounding like a Portishead album recorded over the phone. Elsewhere, twisted blues and moaning, haunted house vocals convene for 'Sightings', and 'Wear You Thin' is like a chill-wave night terror. An uneasy listen, but Capricorn Born Again is a druggy, beautiful raincloud of a record that's got appeal beyond the more conventional parameters of the Not N…
Lunes
Second album by Texas psych duo CALEB COY (guitar) & ETHAN COOK (organ), written in the desert, yet recorded during an endless NYC winter. A cold, expansive sound made ripe for these turbulent times: it's drone rooted deep in the American tradition. RIYL: Earth, Growing, Brightblack Morning Light.
Rainmaker
The day has come! We’re kicking off 2012 with a deluxe reissue of Michael Chapman’s debut Rainmaker. Originally released on Harvest Records in 1969, Rainmaker is a psychedelic-guitar-folk delight. Featuring some of Chapman’s best loved songs, “It Didn’t Work Out,” which features a stellar cast of legendary English musicians of the era; Guitarist “Clem” Clempson was in the prog-band Bakerloo (soon after playing with Chapman he’d join jazz-rockers Colosseum and then Humble Pie) Drummer Aynsley Dun…
Double Demon
What mischief can be made with just cornet, vibraphone and drums. Rob Mazurek has scaled back considerably since Stars Have Shapes, the 2010 record from his Exploding Star Orchestra. His new project, the curiously named Starlicker, is a mere trio, with Chicago vibraphonist Jason Adasiewicz and Tortoise drummer John Herndon. But this group emits more sound and energy than do some sextets. Double Demon is Out to Lunch! for a new generation. Powered by Herndon’s hyperkinet…
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, …
In Vogue Spirit
With their recent split with Naked on the Vague acting as a dip into pop's waters; Wet Hair's follow up, In Vogue Spirit is practically a jump into the pool. The band's most accessible batch of tunes to date boil with Krautrock rhythms, buzzing synths, and a new focus on vocals that has previously been mostly absent in the band's back catalog. It's not all motion and melody here though, the band still retains their experimental spirit, giving the record plenty of teeth to sink into any of …
Pressure
just wild and free. virginia genta (golden jooklo age, etc.) on tenor saxophone and andrew barker exploding drums. paste-on cover art. edition of only 115 numbered copies.
Big shadow Montana
"After producing their frozen trilogy of intoxicated dronemuzik for the Agency, these Scandinavian gentlemen have ventured into more absurdist territories through fictionalized soundtracks for imagined Mondo films and science fiction serials. It is in this context that BJ Nilsen & Stilluppsteypa present the apparitional Big Shadow Montana, an album of slow-motion delirium manifested in occluded smears, nocturnal gasps, and arcane tones from a variety of analogue synthesizers. Amidst the n…
S/T
Exact repro on 180gm vinyl w/ original art. All-analog mastering from original tapes. Upon the breakup of legendary Krautrock duo NEU!, drummer KLAUS DINGER formed LA DUSSELDORF w/ his brother THOMAS & keyboard player HANS LAMPE. This, their S/T debut, was recorded in 1975 & is a staggering mix of Dinger's trademark motorik rhythms & accessible experimentation.
Safiyya
Like a true psychedelic experience, one that if you've ever had, you'll know what we mean, it presents you with a fixed length window that opens into another possible perspective of our lumbering existence. Imagine 500 milligrams administered via an eye dropper filled with mercury and you're on your way. Born of a correspondence between two fellows entrenched in parallel explorations of the unknowable and imagined, there's a mystery to the source of the sounds contained in these grooves; …
Fishbones And Wishbones
*Genuinely jawdropping archival reissue from the Forced Nostalgia label, the first time on vinyl for this unique album recorded in the mid 80's using analogue synths, found objects & DIY tape loops, drawing lines between the the postpunk movement and into the more introspective sounds that would go on to typify so much electronic music of the early nineties* Over twenty three years ago, Pelican Daughters forged a dour and dubbed out brand of post-punk and proto-ambient which would be hail…
Je Suis Vivant, Mais J'ai Peur De Gilbert
LP Edition...from 1974. Amazing, underground concept Lp with musique fantastique behind spooky spoken word text / science fiction related narration. The music is superb, deep / gothic / weird and funky like the best J.P Massiera / William Sheller / Igor Wakhevitch productions. Strange arrangements and clever variations on a theme with lots of thudding hip hop style rock beats / fuzz distortions / Maledictus Sound style studio FX / filtered heavy breathing / electronics and other trippy instrumen…
Armaghedon
Ultra limited LP re-edition, handsigned copies....like most of Maurizio Bianchi's fascinating works, "Armaghedon" is turned to noisy, long minimal sonic dreamscapes, including physical addictive sounds. In this early effort written for a non released experimental movie, Maurizio Bianchi explores sound intensity, somnambulism and "insolit monotony". Try to imagine something between "Phaedra" most intellectual, hallucinatory sequences, the destructive, destructured sounds of Whitehouse and the sac…
Foetus
An internationally known artist, Franco Battiato has been everything in his long career, from beat singer to avantgarde performer, producer, contemporary music composer.His beginnings lay in the mid 60's, with many singles released with no particular success, the first two under his real name of Francesco. He had left the native Sicily (he was born in Jonia, near Catania in 1945) moving to Milan around 1965.Fetus, housed in a outrageous cover (reproducing a foetus) was definitely a prog al…
Human hips and saddle bags
'Human Skab was a 10-year old boy from Elma, Washington who played African music with buckets and spoons. Thunder Hips and Saddle Bags is a 1986 cassette recorded by young Travis Roberts with his neighborhood pals and siblings. It was injected into the underground network of tape traders, zine scribes, college DJs, and freak seekers who were universally bowled over by its bewildering and utterly poignant snapshot of the mid-1980s. Skab's music -- an orchestration of pots n' pans, three string gu…
Red Planet
Red Planet establishes Arborea's complex synthesis of acoustic folk and minimalist drone right out of the gate. From the opening motif of the acoustic guitar lament "The Fossil Sea", Red Planet conjures a panoramic aura, like a lost outtake from Ry Cooder's Paris, Texas soundtrack. As that echoes its way into "Black is the Colour", an eerie and utterly transcendent take on the traditional tune, it becomes mesmerizingly clear how the soft confluence of texture, sound and style meld to create the …
beauty school
during my last visit to the states, about 2 years ago, one of the highlights was definatly a night long visit to SCOTT FOUST's house! john shaw took us there and explained from before what it was gonne be like, we would be seated down in a confortable couch while "the last great man" would stand up next to a pedastal with some quality whiskey, dope and cigarettes on it, sporting a mono coloured suit and sunglasses (day and night) while foust is telling stories about different art records, and ma…
Frkwys Vol. 07
2015 Repress. The full-length player of FRKWYS Vol. 7 features pieces improvised in various forms by David Borden, James Ferraro, Samuel Godin, Laurel Halo, and Daniel Lopatin. When Lopatin (Oneohtrix Point Never, Ford & Lopatin) and RVNG Intl. began discussing this FRKWYS collaboration, Borden's work in Mother Mallard's Portable Masterpiece Co. and his seminal Music For Amplified Keyboard Instruments album were mutually / ecstatically acknowledged. While rooted in academia, Borden's minimalis…
Broken Bones
This latest in the Latitudes series of limited LPs comes from American noise-pop band Gowns, whose Red State album you may recall as being one of 2007's more unclassifiable recordings. A folkish spectre hangs over these pieces, particularly when it comes to the wiry, haunting violin sequences strewn liberally across the session - they bring to life the sinister spoken word of 'Dog', crowning a soundscape that's always on the precipice of turning nasty. Much of Gowns' music tends towards uncertai…
New Sky Dragon
Top flight three man cosmic research team further investigations on galactic flux and refraction with two transmissions of synesthetic mind-fold. Lift off with skyward string stasis cutting through buffeted drum-clouds and synthesiser atmosphere, cosmic forever vision peaks at warp-speed rocket drone, anti-gravity percussion accents and star scraping rainbow universes. Saturating feedback zones spread webs of dimension amidst asteroid belt orbits, where two-way trips initiate zero g shimm…