New Arrivals
ladybird labyrinth
orphan fairytale is the solo monniker of eva van deuren, member of the lady folk troupe MASKESMACHINE, who started blowing my mind 12 years ago as a street performance troupe in antwerp. besides my own ladyfriend, i don't think i know anyone better than eva, and her boyfriend (audiobot madman) carlo steegen. for some reason this makes it even more difficult to write a decent description for this record, we live in the same mansion, and i could write a lot of stories about doing the dishes togeth…
L\'Autopsie Phénoménale De Dieu
These sample-based constructions incorporated sounds from free-jazz, new electronic-generated sounds, classical modernism & vintage geographical recordings. Discordant segments of wailing, top-end violins give way to clunking rhythmic passages of metal marimbas & tuned percussion; free-roaming passages of rasping, low-end bass & the shuffle of free-jazz recall the work of Prestige-era Moondog, as well as aspects of Harry Partch's instrumentation via mid- to latter-day period Tom Waits. Atonal am…
Black Love
Saxophonist Carlos Garnett recorded with Pharoah Sanders, Miles Davis and Art Blakey. His 1974 spiritual jazz album features an amazing line-up of Reggie Lucas (Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins), Buster Williams, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Alex Blake (Sun Ra), Charles Sullivan, Mauricio Smith (Tito Puente), Norman Connors, and Billy Hart. Exact repro reissue.
Endometrio
First ever vinyl reissue of the highly coveted classic LP by Italian noise composer Maurizio Bianchi. Originally released in an extremely limited quanity in 1983, Endometrio showcased M.B. at his most crucial turning point, delving into the uncharted waters he aptly titled ‘bionic music’, blending organic electronics with contorted sounds of the human body to compose one of the most interesting ambient records to date.copies of the original lp are practically non-existent and hard to co…
Espoo
Vladislav Delay's EP Espoo features two conceptual, rhythm-intense tracks. Whereas the groove of the opener "Olari" derives from a sound loop which is manipulated by filters and echoes, the reverse is done with "Kolari." Starting from an impulsive, staccato beat, a sound carpet is woven by means of modifiers which gradually shape a permanent melody, close to Terry Riley's minimalistic concepts. Both tracks share a linear increase in density, and because of their break with the common four…
July 19, 2006
may 2009 release: label-less lp release (“private,” if you will) covering the first ever duo set between myself & geoff mullen, recorded in concert at the brendan murray-curated “uppercase sound #2” event @ pa’s lounge, somerville, ma, 02143, usa, on july 19th, 2006 ...the music is entirely improvised, with geoff sticking largely to a suitcase-electronics-based setup (although he does provide some fine guitar & pedal alterations throughout) & myself to the doepfer (ditto guitar & korg guitar-syn…
Hallway Of Mirrors
VHF is releasing a bunch of solo guitar dudes over the next few weeks. Here's one of 'em! It's an album from New York's Alexander Turnquist called Hallway of Mirrors. It says that above so it's kinda pointless me saying that. Having said that the New York thing was a new bit of info so it's not all filler! I've not heard this chap before but I was rather taken with him on first listen. It's not a million miles away from the likes of James Blackshaw.... ie extreme 12 string fingerpluckery which i…
Oh Me Oh My... The Way The Day Goes By The Sun Is Setting Dogs A
To say Devendra Banhart is unique is an absurd understatement. When I first heard the voice of this completely unknown, precociously talented 21-year-old songwriter, I could not believe it. His occasionally warbling falsetto is alternately bizarre, comical, and often a little frightening. Coupled with his advanced finger-picking guitar style - which itself often veers schizophrenically from gentle grooves into jolting, non-rhythmic stabs and weird harmonic flights of chaos -- and the wildly surr…
LA Vampires & Zola Jesus
Easily one of the releases of the year so far, finally available on limited edition vinyl* Ghostly goings on from gothic psych queen Zola Jesus and kindred spirit LA Vampires (the current guise of Amanda Brown from Pocahaunted), who collaborate across this killer new mini album. 'Bone Is Bloodstone' rumbles into motion with those familiarly smudged out, indecipherable vocals and evaporating drum machines but there's a heavy bass groove and some ghoulish melodic developments set to balance …
Badlands
If you think something’s wrong with your speakers, you are mistaken. No, you can’t turn up the bass. You’re just listening to the raw, stripped down wail of Alex Zhang Hungtai, better known as Dirty Beaches. His MySpace describes the music as “minimalist rockabilly,” and those are probably the two best words I could think of to describe his newest LP, Badlands.At times, Hungtai’s vocals sound quite Elvis-esque; at other times, you can barely make out the mumbling echoes over the subdued drum bea…
The Very Heart Of The World
LP version. Edition of 500 copies. On The Very Heart of the World, Burning Star Core (BXC) has created an incredibly heavy record, built on dense, layered drones, pulses, splintered vocals, and deep rhythms that euphorically build to total overload. With a line-up including the Hair Police front line and other luminaries from across the exploding Midwestern psych-noise-folk underground, BXC's C. Spencer Yeh has assembled a group that seamlessly shifts through epic movements and pushes pure elect…
Flammende Herzen
Michael Rother (half of the influential Krautrock group Neu! and a founding member of Kraftwerk and Harmonia) recorded this first solo album with producer Conny Plank in 1976. Rother's signature guitar sound, the mechanical percussion (Jaki Liebezeit of Can) and the simple yet outerworldly anthemic melodies make Flammende Herzen an outstanding and visionary record."Finally reissued on vinyl, this is the 1976 solo debut from from Neu!/Harmonia guitarist Michael Rother. This would be the fir…
Tomorrow, Tomorrow and Tomorrow
Tomorrow, Tomorrow and Tomorrow was written and recorded as a follow-up to the Bill Fay Group's Time Of The Last Persecution. Although recorded between 1978 and 1981 this album never saw a release at the time, and it fell to the Durtro/Jnana label to unearth these lost 20 songs. Fay comes across as one of those artists who fell victim to the machinations of the music industry, with his first two albums going largely overlooked until an eventual resurgence in interest as the years passed. …
Body EP
You either loved or hated Autre Ne Veut's electrifying 2010 album for Olde English Spelling Bee, and we loved it - as we made abundantly clear at the time. Since its release, ANV has been reasonably quiet, most recently seen turning up on Mordant Music's Variables II 12"; but he's been putting his time to good use it seems, crafting this killer four-track EP for Hippos In Tanks. 'Sweetheart' finds our man warbling and whining in that unmistakable multi-tracked falsetto of his, against a r…
Bermuda Telepaths
RESTOCKED, very last copies... Brand new LP by the So-Cal recluse responsible for the recent "Matrix Metals" cassette on NNF. This one is deeper into the Vodka Soap-style ritual electronics zone.
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…
Confrontations
Vinyl Edition of 750. Another crucial keystone in the occult arc de triomphe of Kansas City composer’s deepening discography! X-filed highway cover artwork designed by Dionysian visualist Tim Goodwillie.Kansas City’s Goblin king of neo-Giallo, brood-blooded dark fantasy soundtracking returns with his third official full-length, two years after the badass psychodrama of Prophecy of the Black Widow. The time betwixt was well spent, on tours (Europe twice, including the Mogwai-curated All To…
Harddisko
'About the record. Live-recordings of Harddisko: 16 computer harddrives on power. Superreal computer music. Upon powering, each harddrive moves with its own speed and pattern, as directed by the firmware and mechanical constitution. Electromagnetic emissions picked up as acoustic signal reveal the specific tone of a drive. In various formations, the harddrives perform according to their past usage and current state. About the artist : Valentina Vuksic (CH - 1974) is a computer artist and progra…
Spirit Of The Positive Wind
featuring Brian Sullivan & Nate Nelson (Mouthus), Pete Nolan (Magik Markers, Spectre Folk) and Karl Bauer (Axolotl). The LP features two side-long tracks of bubbling, meandering noise-drone collages. "What the hell is this madness? After the Georgia Sea Island Singers took me somewhere nice it’s up to this super-group to drag me back to the fierce, nightmarish industrial landscape from whence I came. Then again this isn’t the sound of Bradford. I don’t know what it’s the sound of actua…
Split
The third LP in the series produced by Kommisar Hjuler and Mama Baer has just Mama Baer on one side and on the other side we find the highly respectable Runzelstirn & Gurgelstock. This originally Swiss project has moved to Japan ages ago, and there (and most likely anywhere else) he performs his pieces, aktions as they are called in the best performance tradition. Here a piece from April 2009 in Osaka and its quite a surprising one, if you know their previous work. Much of that older work consis…