New Arrivals
White Bird Release
Vinyl! The sixth album from Mark Nelson's longtime solo project following Quiet City. A mix of warmth & foreboding expansiveness, neither of which is minimal nor overdone.
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, …
Red Horse
Red Horse is the blistering free-post-everything project of drummer/multi-percussionist Eli Keszler and guitarist/mad-scientist Steve Pyne. While both musicians are active in a number of different projects (you probably wouldn't believe Pyne's day job even if we told you), Red Horse catches them working with a distilled sense of focus and is for many their breakthrough project. Red Horse (not to be confused with the similarly-titled debut) is the duo's second album, and follows the rush of…
Here's Sunshine
This is another lost private-press gem, from a Texas singer/songwriter who is remembered for “looping, melodically through often surrealist lyrics with a strong Tim Buckley influence.” Another description drops the always-intriguing “downer” folk tag on this record, calling it “stark, edgy real-people loner vibe, reverb, acoustic instrumentation, occasional hand percussion, piano, harmonica, as that off-the-chain Texas feel that approaches solo Roky Erickson territory.” The record label, Backbea…
Wild Songs
Acephale keep it spooky with Ecstasy's tremulous debut album of ether folk-pop. The best bits are the least twee, including the HTDW-onhelium styles of 'Wild Want' and the shrill ultra lo-fi home recording 'Haunted Love'.(BOOMKAT)
Caesarean
As Concern, Gordon Ashworth has explored drone music through an inspection of the textural components of acoustic instruments and recording processes. On Cæsarean the palette presented is a singularly precise one. Using simple sources (piano, clarinet, banjo, shrutti box, and acoustic guitar), tape processing (1/4” and cassette), and reverberation, Ashworth crafts delicate tape music through transforming repetitions and obscured fidelity. The emotional and physical presence of Cæsarean is over…
Teils teils
The first track of this is the side-long "Teilmenge 20," which begins as a set of indecipherable static electricity clicks that are quite warm and engaging, which quickly builds to a rhythmic cycle, continuing to mutate and diverge throughout the entire track. Most interestingly, as the rhythm sets in it truly begins to resemble a traditional 4/4 techno beat. The tempo and percussive elements are there, but the sounds in no way resemble the stale drum machines and overwrought synths. As the pi…
Forever Falling Toward The Sky
Forever Falling Toward the Sky is the first ever release by Bay Area based Vestals, AKA Lisa McGee. A taught set of haunting electric ballads, these five tracks weave together a number of layered guitars and vocals into a smokey tapestry of blown electricity. Rather than the ephemeral drones McGee has been involved with recently, most notably the group-mind ensemble Portraits & the duo Higuma, Vestals retains the clarity of song, with these hypnotic gyms having been slowly carved out over…
Bright Failing Star
Bright Failing Star is probably one of the most straightforward albums I've made, and under some of the most trying circumstances I've encountered in recent years. The south London flat we were in at the time had suffered flood damage during the summer before we moved in, and our room had it's sodden carpet ripped out and the bare concrete floor exposed. This was never fixed in the duration we lived there so by December it was bloody freezing. To compound this we had no hot water for 5 months, c…
Trop de pas assez
Salmigondis is a collective (born in 2006) of musicians and graphist designers. Free rock, psychedelic, noise Ludovic Renaud (keyboard, turntables, electronics), Jean-Pierre Barja (bass, keyboard, electronics), Jérome Declercq (saxophones, keyboard, basse), Mathieu Renaud (guitar, electronics), Jean-Noël Cognard (drums,objects, voice). Recorded in 2007. Limited to 150 copies.
Traba
"Following the blurry shoegaze ambience of his revelatory 'Navigare' LP for Miasmah, former Slowdive drummer Simon Scott applies his melancholy treatments to four tracks of widescreen, textured ambience for Chicago's Immune label. 'Traba' is distinguished from his debut by a swirling aquatic theme embedded in the titles and the nautical nature of the recordings. The mass of 'She Came From The Sea' is flooded with slow moving currents of darkness while at the surface we can hear lighter, m…
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…
By The Throat
2012 repress, LP version. This is Reykjavik-based composer/producer Ben Frost's second release for the Icelandic Bedroom Community label. By The Throat is blood red and cloaked in shadow. Produced in Iceland by Ben Frost and Valgeir Sigurðsson (Björk, CocoRosie, Bonnie "Prince" Billy), this album features performances by Amiina of Sigur Rós fame, Arcade Fire's Jeremy Gara, Swedish metal outfit Crowpath and composer Nico Muhly. Aside from the purely musical language of harmony and melody, there'…
Songs for the Gentle Man
"Originally released in 1971 on Dandelion Records this was Bridget St. John's second and, arguably, best album. Produced and scored by Pink Floyd collaborator Ron Geesin, Songs For The Gentle Man was recorded at Sound Techniques in Chelsea (where everybody from Fairport Convention to Nick Drake had made albums) and is a far more sophisticated work than its predecessor. Organized around a small chamber orchestra, Songs For The Gentle Man is a set of cool, pastel songs that simultaneously h…
Russian mind
Amazing! Transcribed by the Material Eye Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, Universitetskaya nab. 1, St. Petersburg, 199034, Russia. 6 baseless marble pillars not yet completed, covered in white strata against the backdrop of a simple three-dimensional plane with soft edges. 1. Synesthesia outside venue. 2. If you lived here, you'd be home right now. 3. Lopatin designs preset Prismata ascribed to Trujillo, 2003 and goes downstairs for air. 4. He comes from a long line of shovelers. 5. Life …
Live in Japan - Part one
Two seperately released live albums form Fenn O'Berg, featuring recordings taken from their 2009 Japanese tour. It features Christian Fennesz, Jim O'Rourke, and Peter Rehberg. Both recorded during the group's 2009 Japanese performances.
Vessel
Vessel: a sonic narrative. Through physical confinement and isolation a threshold is penetrated and a vast new world is suddenly accessible. Pressed in a limited edition of 200 copies housed in a deluxe tip-on jacket.
Live 1982
Marbled dark-red vinyl, limited to 150 handnumbered copies. Handmade gatefold cover with latexpainting + 2 photos. Listing this record as "Nurse With Wound" in the title is not totally wrong as this is a great live performance (1982) of Steven Stapleton's wife Diana Rogerson aka Chrystal Belle Scrodd, she also released 2 wonderful records on United Dairies in the early/middle of the '80 (Belle De Jour & The Inevitable Chrystal Belle Scrodd Record). This is a really fantastic release by this Aust…
Split
Brand new split LP from fellow Manchester weirdos A Middle Sex and Gnod. Gnod follow on from some killer releases over the last couple of years, a split 7" with Bong, a tape on Not Not Fun, and most recently a collaborative LP with White Hills. The oddly titled 15 minute 'Why Don't You Smile Like The Other Children?' opens with hazy strings and cosmicly far out voices, this slow groove packs a multi-coloured burst of rhythmic psychedelic vibes. On the flip side, A Middle Sex take up duties of do…
Rain in skull
Australian Charles Curse's music is one of the weirdest things I've come across all year. On Rain In Skull, fragments of disjointed folk melodies move across a plain of wheezing chords, tape hiss, children's voices, ambient washes, amp hum, electronic glitch and bits of buzz in general. The contrast between downcast guitar playing and the physical claustrophobia-inducing weight of sound is equally perplexing and intriguing. It's all presented in a decidedly lo-fi environment but the sound constr…