New Arrivals
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 …
From The Grave ...
Expo '70 bass/synth player Matt Hill has gone solo. His debut LP under the Umberto moniker is an analog masterpiece heavily influenced by the classic film score work of Goblin, except arguably better. From the moment you drop the needle, you'll be transported to Italy as an extra in a vintage horror flick directed by Dario Argento. This is some of the most accessible, yet totally authentic sounding music of the "giallo" genre we've ever heard. It was previously only available as a hyper l…
What I Became
"If string theory is correct, this is approximately the thirteenth album Matt Valentine has released that definitely shouldnt be filed under a group name (Tower Recordings, Bummer Road, Golden Road, etc.). On the other hand, if string theory is correct, this might also be his 11,000th album. The truth, one suspects, is somewhere in between. Since bedding down in southern Vermont at the dawn of the century, MV has been as cussedly prolific as anyone. The gout of LPs, cassettes, CDRs, singles and …
The Ghosts Of Bush
Special Edition - White Vinyl. 3rd and final pressing limited to 400 copies for the world** Having already created a huge amount of interest, 'The Ghosts Of Bush' is finally here on a limited vinyl pressing and is easily one of the most pertinent and interesting Radiophonic and hauntological artefacts we've had the pleasure of stocking in recent years. Created by World Service studio manager Robin The Fog, 'The Ghosts of Bush' Consists entirely of nocturnal location recordings made by him at Bus…
The Shepherdess and the Bone-White Bird
Stone Breath returns with their first new album in over 5 years. A visionary creation of Eastern-influenced rural acid folk. From fingerpicked acoustics; to clawhammer banjo excursions; to the side-long exaltation that is “The Shepherdess of the Fiery Wheels,” Stone Breath manifest their best work to date; an entire set of originals with the strange and beautiful harmonies and instrumentation which graced their past work. They are clear in sight, united in purpose, and shining in the darkness. C…
Music From Italian TV
New LP - The Phantom Family Halo - Music From Italian TV - The label behind this release is using a very cryptic description for this record. One that, unfortunately, won't help sell many copies of a very enjoyable record. We won't be reprinting said description here, but what we will tell you what we know. Phantom Family Halo Band is from Louisville, Kentucky. At least one member of the band Sapat (remember their great LP on Siltbreeze from a couple years back?) is involved, but thi…
Spirits
After a few years spent living in Sweden and touring with Cecil Taylor's Jazz Unit, Ayler moved to NYC to begin imposing his revolutionary style of jazz on the world through a number of groundbreaking records. Spirits, recorded at Atlantic Studios in New York City on 24 February 1964, was his first effort. Recorded a few months prior to his landmark album for ESP-Disk, Spiritual Unity (but only released in Europe on Denmark's Debut Records), for the occasion Ayler recruited Norman Howard …
Something That Has Form And Something That Does Not
Regrouping for a third album under their 'On' moniker, Steven Hess and Sylvain Chaveau have created another body of chilling improvised recordings at their Chicago studio. As with previous records the results were passed to a guest musician for rearrangement of perspective and mixing techniques. Following Deathprod's work on 'Your Naked Ghost...', the material for this album was handed to experimental virtuoso Christian Fennesz, who transforms the source sounds into a display of stripped,…
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…
A Year In The Kingdom
Since Joshua Tillman had his profile raised by association with Seattle folk favourites Fleet Foxes, whose drumsticks he wields, he hasn't exactly been making an attention-seeking racket in his solo career. In contrast to Fleet Foxes' dawn-chorus harmonising, Tillman favours a spare style, and his sixth solo album may be the year's most subdued record. "I possess a taste for blood. I have numbered mankind's days," the 28-year-old murmurs on "There Is no Good in Me", throwing in a reference to fi…
Irrlicht
Vinyl version of Klaus Schulze's first solo album, from 1972. "After stints in the legendary bands Tangerine Dream and Ash Ra Tempel, Irrlicht was Klaus Schulze's first stab at a a solo project. He had radical ideas for the newly developed electronic music scene which are blatantly present here. Equipped with a small orchestra, 4-track, guitar, percussion, organ, and a little electronic gadgetry, he created a 'cosmic classic'. No synthesizers were used here, just a remarkable use of sampl…
Megafauna
Understand this: Yoga dispenses a sinister frailty of howling swellsin hissing static that combusts into crawling shock heaps, to the effectof Mayhem performing Twin Peaks incidentals in a prairie recordedby The KLF. A brief description casts them as black metal's answer to Throbbing Gristle. The texture-based rendering of their compositionssails them on a strange sea between song and sound effect as itbobs along the waves like a dead man s bottled message. Aspects ofGoblin rehearsals in dead hi…
Dispossession
Dispossession is the second full length from Brooklyn’s Mike Wexler, and his debut for Mexican Summer. An artist who defies easy categorization—a songwriter/guitarist without a traditionalist bone in his body, with an ear for far flung sound-worlds and sonic atmospheres both high & low, Wexler brings all of his manifold interests to bear in carving out a space for a singular vision uniquely attuned to the present moment. Dispossession is the product of over two years of intermittent recor…
Fugue
I began writing about this Tape & Bill Wells 'Fugue' record yesterday but I gave up as the words just were not coming to me. I guess that's probably a good sign though as I was just kind of getting into the melancholy zone of the record, which certainly is a thing of beauty. Wells' guitar playing is delicate and magical. The Tape guys really give him space to do his thing adding wonderful little details and twinkles into the mix. This quite simply is the prettiest, most charming record I …
Raptus
Doris Norton, pioneer in the early electronic/computer music, began her musical career playing avant-garde and progressive music using synthesizers such as Roland System 700, Roland system 100M and Minimoog (Jacula, Antonius Rex). In december 1980 she recorded, at the Fontana Studio 7 (Milan), her first solo album entitled Under Ground (Musik Research). Sponsored by Apple computer and the Roland Corporation music instshe was more involved in experimental electro computerized music and rec…
Horribles Parade
Gary War's thick synth-heavy psychedelia occupies a space between spacey bedroom experimentalists like R. Stevie Moore or the more contemporary Kurt Vile & the abrasive proto-punk of Chrome & Debris. This album expands on the more stripped down sounds of his "Zontag" single, plying layers of warm fuzz & feedback on top of psychedelic pop song structures.
September Cell
Absolutely KILLER new twelve from Vatican Shadow on Dominick Fernow's own, newly minted Bed of Nails imprint - his most direct dancefloor productions to date. Edition of 700* Bed Of Nails is a new label curated by Dominick Fernow of Vatican Shadow and Prurient fame. Operating from his recently consecrated L.A. compound - the label will focus on his reorientation towards industrial dancefloor rhythms and seductively isolated electronics. Fernow christens the label with 'September Cell', a…
Hexplore Superfluidity
Stargate is something in between pre-sleep Tetris Effect and Trance music in slowmotion: gated soft synth arpeggios smoothly modulate towards brutal supersawed patterns, disintegrating into ecstatic vocals. You are opening the doors of an Ibizia club at 5 am, the foam is all around and your eyes start twisting, your brain is gently stretched & pitched down. You are locked into the longest build-up ever. Unique, truly inspired, 100% uplifting music from the "Dawn of the Cryonics": watching …
Cosmic Tones For Mental Therapy
This disc brings together the Sun Ra recordings "Cosmic Tones For Mental Therapy" and "Art Forms Of Dimensions Tomorrow" (recorded in 1963 and '61-'62 respectively). Cosmic Tones functions as a kind of blueprint for the sort of large-scale jazz weirdness that would inform much of Sun-Ra's subsequent works, featuring the woozy reeds of 'And Otherness' and the afro-jazz experiments of 'Thither And Yon'. On 'Adventure Equation' a space echo treatment on the recording which is reprised for the sax f…
Generator breaker
A new Astral Social Club album is always a highlight of the year and Generator Breaker is no exception. Neil Campbell is one of the veterans of the British DIY/Drone/Noise scene and with ASC he has slowly formulated his very own and unique musical universe, akin to the psychedelic visions of his contemporaries and sometimes collaborators Sunroof! and Vibracathedral Orchestra but with a more electronic, less rock-influenced approach, instead aiming towards a heavily layered techno-infused …