New Arrivals
Metz
Some will find it hard to believe that a glamrock band with a gritty urban veneer came from Texas and stuck together long enough to release this milestone record. Indeed, I was startled to learn that they're from Texas and not NYC or London. Clearly the underground music scene throughout Texas is fertile with talent and enough socio-cultural diversity to support any genre, including mid-70s glamrock. Metz take on glam includes some of the associated clichés like heavy chunks of chord strokes and…
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…
Correspondance Sonore
A mail collaboration between Denis McCarty (turntable, cassettes, vinyles) & Martial Bécheau (cut-ups, computer, sounds). Martial Bécheau practice montage, the assembly of this matter that is the sound. Orchestration reports, juxtaposition plans, rhythm & density. Implement disparate materials, and compare the sonorous (sounds, words, music, soundscape, etc.).. Organize of the time factor - Subversive resonances - Respiratory theatre - Walled up silence - Temporal confrontations. Between collag…
Lava
"Lava is a wonderfully apt title for this duet between Liudas Mockunas on soprano, tenor and bass saxophones and Barry Guy on bass. The music was recorded live at Kaunas Artists House Concert Hall in Lithuania on the 2nd of April, 2011, and released in a limited edition run of 300 vinyl LP's. Lava is the appropriate name for this music as it flows slowly and inexorably forward. Guy is a rock solid bassist who is a stalwart on the avant jazz and classical scene in Europe, and his skills ar…
Love Is A Stream
Limited vinyl edition. Includes a 50-minute bonus CD featuring some of Jefre Cantu-Ledesma's original material reworked by Type label head John Twells (Xela). As a member of San Francisco legends Tarentel and Type's premier astral travelers The Alps, Jefre Cantu-Ledesma is hardly a new addition to the label, so it's hard to believe that Love Is A Stream is his first Type solo album. With previous releases on Arbor, Spekk and his own Root Strata imprint, this latest album marks his journey int…
Red Man K's Bedrifter
In 2001, Peter Rehberg (then of Mego) asked Parl Kristian Bjørn Vester aka Goodiepal if he would be interested in doing something for the label. Despite meeting on numerous occasions at various events and happenings around Europe, nothing was delivered. One hot August day in 2013, a large package arrived containing lacquers for a double vinyl LP. Here it was: the Goodiepal Mego album delivered as lacquers and not a WeTransfer link. The lacquers were sent to plant and made into test-p…
Free Reign
Their 7th album! Record & produced by the band in their hometown of Liverpool & mixed w/ assistance from Daniel Lopatin (ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER, FORD & LOPATIN). The title is apt for this particularly bold & assured new transmission from planet Clinic, it neither turns its back on the sond of their previous albums, nor seeks to recreate them.
The Blackout
Thrill Jockey seem to be snapping up lots of underground faves, Barn Owl, Eternal Tapestry, Wooden Shjips, Sun Araw, and now Tunnels. For several years, Tunnels has been the moniker for the solo output of Nicholas Bindeman. Over time Bindeman's sound has evolved from the slow, breathing landscapes of his earlier ambient/drone releases (Colour Seance, Vexations) to completely fried-out bedroom psych explorations (Astral Collage, In Between Dreams). The Blackout delves into a world of sound un…
A World Out Of Time
Both words in Eternal Tapestry's name say something about their music, but it's the first that's key. This Portland band's expansive psych rock sounds like it could go on forever, and most of their releases have in fact been culled from longer, open-ended improvisations. The way they slowly build these jams-- adding parts, increasing volume, and cresting in unison-- you get the feeling they're always playing, and their records are just glimpses of an endless stream.For A World Out of Time, Etern…
Cover Versions
Andrew Pekler selected 300 different covers from second-hand records and, using colorful geometric elements to cover over all titles, performer’s names, and label logos, removed traces of the covers’ original contexts. The sunsets, couples in silhouette, alpine panoramas, roses on pianos, female faces in close-up, and seascapes no longer serve as the packaging for easy listening and exotica. Instead, the romantic, bizarre and intriguingly bland images of the original covers are free to lend thei…
III
Macronympha side project focusing on the heavy low end sound often the basis for Macronympha compositions. OVMN III removes the layers of sound to reveal the thick crumbling distorted base. Constantly moving forward while seemingly static, this piece is enveloped by and progresses in a wave of distortion. Recorded in 1995 by Joe Roemer and Rodger Stella with cover art by Sam McKinlay. Lp comes in a deluxe silver silkscreen on black cardboard sleeve. Edition of 99 copies w/insert.
Novaya Zemlya
Novaya Zemlya (lit. "New Land"), also known in Dutch as "Nova Zembla" and in Norwegian as "Gåselandet" (lit. the "Goose Land"), is an archipelago in the Arctic Ocean in the north of Russia and the extreme northeast of Europe, the easternmost point of Europe, lying at Cape Flissingsky on the northern island. The artwork, by Jon Wozencroft, includes an essay by Thierry Charollais, "Thomas Köner's Novaya Zemlya: towards a metaphysical geography"... Of course we find the unique Köneresque glow…
Old Punch Card
Taking inspiration from early music concrete and electronic music, the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, Nuno Canavarro, Raymond Scott, David Behrman, and free improvisation, Old Punch Card is a beautifully noisy, jagged, yet stately album of synthesizer music. The ideas and implementation of Old Punch Card (the album title alluding to the electronic, faintly mechanic origins of the music) were the result of an entirely new challenge: to do something completely different from anything else he's…
So Unreal
Episode two in season one of the LA Vampires Collab Chronicles finds her joining forces with elusive alien discotech-head Matrix Metals of the nomadic Outer Limits Recordings cabal. Blurry ornate cassette-loop architectures groove and grind under jazzy Casio canopies while Ms. LA Vamps screws it all down and layers in additional square wave keyboard lines, echo chamber FX, drum machine detailing, low-end throbs, and sings lead on a gold spraypainted microphone. The entire LP's got that '…
Minimal Milan
Lovely compilation selected by Xiu (Oksana Rodionova) consisting of contemporary minimal electronic and deviant-techno artists based in Milan, Italy. Here's the label's mission statement as you could say: "The musical aesthetism defended by the label admits connections with post-modern qualities and challenges conventions for an innovative musical conversation between analogue instrumentation and technologies." The label will host various types of electronic music always seen throught a dark and…
Living on the Invisible Line
Since 1997 Italian brother duo My Cat Is An Alien has been documenting an ever deepening musical dreamscape, their massive body of work representing some of the most emotive and soulful improvised experimentalism in underground music. Recorded in a remote region of the Western Alps, this latest LP navigates especially tranquil territory as it builds blissed-out pastoral mirages, dappled just slightly with glimmers of an outer darkness. Like much of the duo's best work, Living On the Invis…
Air Museum
Air Museum blurs the lines between acoustic and electronic music even more without sacrificing melody or the delicacy of their sound. It is an album of firsts. It was the first album that the acoustic instruments were not processed via a computer. Instead, the processing of the instrumentation (acoustic and electric guitar, cello, accordion, piano, bass etc.) was done using a variety of pedals, modular synths, and other analog techniques. While acoustic instruments were used extensively, …
Peepers
Elsewhere, ‘The Love Didn't Go Anywhere’ sees Leafcutter John play guitar on a beautifully loping piece that has the subtle afterglow of classic Roxy Music, with Bryan Ferry’s vocal replaced by the rapier glide of the two reeds, while Tom Herbert’s hefty double bass pounds out concise but penetrating lines. Interestingly, prior to the sessions, Rochford listened to a lot of ‘60s soul (“Aretha and Marvin Gaye”), an influence that he has channelled with more guile than is immediately discernible. …
Hypnosis, distortion & other innovations 1969-1978
In 2010, against all odds, Angola Soundtrack Vol. 1 (AACD 069CD/AALP 069LP) was awarded the German Record Critics' Prize in the category "Black Music." This victory was all the sweeter for its triumph over the predicted winner, Aloe Blacc's multi-platinum record, Good Things. Many were surprised that the award was handed to a compilation that covered obscure music, but it didn't surprise the team behind Analog Africa, who believed such an award should have come much earlier. Since discovering th…
The watchers
The Watchers is a historic collaboration between Lubomyr Melnyk and James Blackshaw. These new pieces are being released as a CD/LP with material exclusive to each format. LP is pressed in an edition of 500. I first met Lubomyr Melnyk at a festival called Hea Uus Heli in October 2008. We were both scheduled to play that day and I was very excited to see him perform. Before the show I bought several LPs from him and mentioned as much. Lubomyr (more than modest and courteous, as he always i…