New Arrivals
Oostwestkruisbest
Between 2009 and 2013 Kim recorded a bunch of music; in the old tramtransfer at the Kinkerstraat in Amsterdam (now de Foodhallen), in Berlin living in a biodynamic living community in Lichtenberg & in an apartment on the Hoofdweg in Amsterdam, that doubled as a grow-house. The title ‘Oostwestkruisbest’ is a combination of the sayings ‘oost west thuis best’ and ‘ieder huisje heeft zijn kruistje’. The first translates as ‘home sweet home’, where the second means every home has its own troubles.
‘I…
Meditations for Synthesiser + Mbira Nyunga Nyunga
Earthtones is the musical identity of Serge Bandura, an electronic artist, former jazz musician, meditation teacher and ritualist based in LA. Kevin Nathaniel channels sound as a universal healing force through traditional African instruments and is a former student of legendary master musicians such as Ephat Mujuru and Chief Bey K. Sending files back and forth during the pandemic, the two artists deepened a musical friendship and began a dialog between the Mbira Nyunga Nyunga, the Kalimba and a…
Modular Organ System
Begun in 2017 and developed and refined over the six years since, the Berlin based artists, Phillip Sollmann and Konrad Sprenger, deliver their first LP, via Choose Records, documenting their remarkable Modular Organ System. Comprising a single, long form composition divided into two parts, “Modular Organ System” is a sublime and masterful work of drone, imbued with immediacy and emotion, that culminates as one of our favourite experimental organ records to appear in recent years.
Räkna evighet som intet
*300 copies limited edition* “Räkna evighet som intet” is an electroacoustic composition in two movements and as much an incantation as it is a process of mourning embodied in an aesthetic structure. Throughout the piece Enocksson weaves taut strings, tense static and veils of feedback with fragmented voices, all the while extracting verses from acclaimed Swedish poet Lotta Lotass into emotional chorales on the impermanence of life. Merging the geist of Enocksson’s prior work – the industrial do…
Serwed IV
Flaty & OL’s Serwed return to Huerco S’ West Mineral for their fourth album; straying from their usual bass abstractions into hi-gloss lab experiments with obvious appeal to disciples of Dopplereffekt, Vangelis or the 'Resident Evil'/'Silent Hill' OSTs.
Fire Music
2023 restock; originally released in 1965. 2019 reissue. Some of the most exciting jazz albums to listen to are those that try to strike a middle ground between the mainstream and the Avant-garde. One such example is Archie Shepp’s Fire Music: an often-fascinating album, rich in compositional and improvisational prowess. Employing a sextet including drummer Joe Chambers and alto saxophonist Marion Brown, Shepp puts together a record that is both challenging and accessible to most listeners. Fire…
Alone On Penguin Island
Originally released on Dome (Wire's Bruce Gilbert and Graham Lewis's seminal label), this is an often overlooked milestone in freefrom and artistic post-punk. A siginficant piece of the UK musical puzzle when a lot of artists were shrugging off the previous decade and embracing the DIY attitude of the 1980s.
Outlaw
In the early- to mid-'60s, Gene McDaniels was a successful singing star. He hit the charts with the singles "A Hundred Pounds of Clay," "Tower of Strength," and "Chip Chip". However, McDaniels was a more thoughtful and politically conscious man than his hits would suggest, and after the assassination of Martin Luther King, he left America to live in Europe and focus on songwriting. When he returned to the US in 1970, he was billing himself as Eugene McDaniels the Left Rev. Mc D, and his music to…
Beyond the Reach of Light
*300 copies limited edition* Beyond the Reach of Light is the 4th release from Oakland-based drone musician Field of Fear. The band’s most personal record, Beyond the Reach of Light chronicles the ebbs and flows of depression with harrowing precision. The album is an emotionally raw and sonically varied experience - in a moment changing from aggressive industrial charges in “Darkness” to subdued ambient drone throbs in “Cold.” Album closer “Lost” emparts a sense of someone emotionally spent and …
Incorporeal
Burnt down utopias and urban paranoia, Hidden Horse are back with their second album. “Incorporeal” is the follow-up to 2022’s “Opala” and the band’s first release on vinyl. Composed by João Kyron (keyboards/electronics) and Tony Watts (drums), long-time friends and collaborators on different projects, the most prominent one being the exotic and dreamy Beautify Junkyards (Ghost Box). As a duo they’re a totally different game.
Playing live regularly after the release of “Opala” offered them the p…
For Franz
*150 copies limited edition* "It starts very simply. March 1988. The birth of an elephant. Basically, not exactly. Hair and teeth, we were told, it’s like that, it happens more often than you think. He was hungry and he was dirty. There he sucks the vacuum cleaner. We couldn’t stop laughing ! There he purrs. Time flies so fast and he has grown. «Aggression, like love», he used to say, «is first projected onto an individual who then introject them». In the introjective phases, identification with…
Sin Comentarios
*150 copies limited edition* This fateful meeting with a tree makes this collaborative album with Anla Courtis take one a more serious aspect that first intended, as it was the last project Perrot completed before his untimely meeting with the tree in the Forêt de Fontainebleau forest, the master completed just two days before the accident. Courtis was of course shocked by his collaborator’s sudden death, the two had never met in person, but he wanted this LP to be a fitting tribute to his late …
Mirrors
*150 copies limited edition* For their first collaboration as a duo, rather than succumb to the devastating fury that is the hallmark of so-called 'noise' music, Michael Morley (electric guitar) and Michel Henritzi (lapsteel) have opted for the open sea, and the interior landscapes with the ghostly strangeness that is usually associated with them. The emergence of embryonic melodies under their fingers never frightens them. On the contrary, it allows them to delve deeply into the contemplative a…
Sfinge
Following the 40th anniversary edition of Barbara e altri Carella - the classic and hard to find Funk / AOR masterpiece by Enzo Carella - in September, it's now time for a due re-issue of Sfinge, its follow-up released in 1981 whose original edition usually sells on the second-hand market for prices even crazier than those of Barbara... Carella was an Italian singer-songwriter who is best remembered for his 1979 major hit Barbara, which won second prize at the Sanremo Festival. Once again, all t…
2015-2020
Under the production moniker of Material Things, 12th Isle co-founder Stewart Brown unveils a part debut album part compendium of musical collaborations spanning from 2015-2020. Some recordings began as long, one-take improvisations (How's Life, Peckham) spliced together and revisited years later. Others were based upon chance opportunities to record with musicians operating a long way from the parameters of 12th Isle. Cult private-press loner folk guitarist Bob Theil, whose 1982 album So Far co…
Akuma No Uta
*2023 stock* "When I talk about Boris' Akuma no uta , I always relate it to the sampler platter at Friendly's, or any other restaurant. It gives you a taste of everything. From the Sabbath styled doom, to there Earth crushing drone. You even get a portion of MC5 styled noise attacks. And just like the salty deep fried goodness of the sampler platter, you're bound to like at least one of them. Maybe even all of them.After the almost ten minute guitar drone of Intoro subdues you to your chair, th…
Villa Graps
*2023 stock* Released by Apartment Records (aparec028) on 6 January 2010 as an LP pressed on 180 gram vinyl and packaged in a silk screened sleeve with fluorescent artwork. 1st edition of 100 copies on black vinyl; 10-15 with orange lettering on the sleeve, the rest with red lettering. 2nd edition of 100 copies on transparent red vinyl; 47 copies with blue lettering on the sleeve, the rest with blood red lettering.
Recorded Summer 2006.Performed by Kjell Runar Jenssen, Per Gisle Galåen, Lasse Ma…
Zombie
"Zombie: Fela in his life time was never ‘a good bed-fellow’ of the military institution. As a political activist, he believed the army should operate under the mandate of a civil government. If national interest compels the armed forces to intervene in government, the army is obliged to hand over power to a new civil government elected by the people and enjoying their mandate. To do otherwise is to usurp power particularly since a soldier’s duty is not to seek a political mandate. For emphasis …
Yellow Fever
*2023 stock* Fela Kuti deplores the fashion among African women for skin-whitening creams, an example of the post-colonial inferiority complex he believed was holding back the country's development. The song addresses the fashion much as 1973’s “Gentleman” berated African men for adopting European suits and ties. Fela explains that if you catch an “original” fever such as jaundice, you will suffer but, with luck, survive, and your symptoms will fade away. But if you catch an “artificial” (self-i…
J.J.D (Johnny Just Drop!!) - Live!! At Kalakuta Republik
*2023 stock* "Johnny Just Drop is talking about Africans who travel abroad only to return home with new values and mannerisms. Since the advent of colonialism in Africa, the education system left Black people with an inferior perception of their culture. Those who are Western educated, are in the habit of repeating untruths about African traditions and heritage, because the discipline to think and act big has not yet become a part of Africa’s present day academic and intellectual traditions. For…