New Arrivals
Zhine (Movements for twenty-two bells)
Awesome and evocative release, full rich of the sonority of psychoactive tones that will blow your mind! Zhinè is a meditation to achieve a state of inner peace, also with sounds. This CD contains a single music track created with the sound of twenty-two tibetan bowls, processed with analog effects like reverbs and delays. Ultra limited edition (100 only, and it is a proper CD) in nice digipack cover
The love robots
Jim O'Rourke, guitar. Paal Nilssen-Love : drums. Lasse Marhaug, electronics. Recorded at Gok Sound Tokyo by Yoshiaki Kondo February 2011. Mixed by James Plotkin. Coproduced by Pica et PNL. Gatefold cover. 500 copies. Housing, parasites and hammering textures.
Pass hidingly seek
Long-running solo project by Jeffry Astin. Label head honcho of everyone's favorite underground cassette label Housecraft. His highly abstract style, represented on over 40 releases, predominantly cassettes, defies all attempts at elementary categorisation, but indicates broad influences from modern and ethnic drone, tape music, musique concrète, kosmische and lo-fi, amongst others. Two selected recordings “Pass Hidingly Seek” (2009) and “Quaking Myth” (2010) finally get the proper issue on wax!
Luz
From the very start the world around you is singing. There's a distant conversation spoken through the trees, but it stays unclear against the clarity of the songs of the forest. Within that life the forms of the heart open up, as if immediately transported to a city-wide window, with only the view of afternoon traffic below, the burning concrete, and the inside of a small apartment. Nothing more than a toy piano lifting its head over the plumes of steam from a cup of tea. Momentary narrat…
An Anthology Of Noise & Electronic Music Vol 6
The sixth and penultimate edition in Sub Rosa's ongoing assembly of crucial noise and electronic music looks at the period 1957-2010. So far the series has been duly noted for its excavation and reappraisal of lesser known works by important artists and vol. 6 is no different, presenting 26 exclusive and original compositions including the work of Tzvi Avni, Joseph Nechvatal, and Kohei Gomi/Pain Jerk among better known titans of the avant garde such as Stephen O'Malley, Dick Raaymakers, J…
Exile in Paradise
Established in 1978 by Truus de Groot in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, she tinkered with toy and electronic instruments in her flat - amidst the explosion of Punk Rock. Even though Truus was very active in that genre and “New Wave” as well, the more experimental side gradually took over and the concept of Plus Instruments was born. Plus Instruments released their first e.p. single in 1979 on Dutch label Plurex:
Playing odd electronic instruments, Bass and vocals, most of their performances were im…
Lalibela
Founded 40 years ago in 1972 The Pyramids released three albums before splitting up in 1977: Lalibela (1973), King Of Kings (1974) followed by the seminal Birth/Speed/Merging LP (1976). Three albums that made them one of the most mysterious and legendary of all the spiritual cosmic jazz collectives of the early 70s, like the Art Ensemble of Chicago and Sun Ra. Lalibela (1973) was the first album recorded by The Pyramids following their landmark journey throughout Africa as students from Antioch …
Souvenir Of Italy
A lost gem from the mid 80s in the best italian tradition, BlowUp reissue of the month: to describe GustoForte’s Picture disc “Souvenir of Italy - La merda che fuma”, to give some dialect shape to the electro-magnetic throbbings that come out from the record , to try drawing, with grammatic help also that more basic, a logic or a descriptive way, it’s complex.And not because exists a multi-shape objective difficulty but rather the concreteness it’s impossible to approach to GustoForte: sandpaper…
Voix
First Ever Official Reissue Remastered from the Original Master Tapes!I talian avant-garde and film composer Egisto Macchi (1928-1992) produced a large and largely forgotten catalog of astounding music during the 1960s and 1970s. At the crest of that incredible body of work stands Voix, an LP of intense contrasts; haunting, dissonant choirs collide with dexterous ‘musique concrete’ manipulations and other worldly soundscapes, while guitars buzz and strings scrape violently. The world of V…
Red sky
Joe McPhee, tenor saxophone, pocket trumpet. Paal Nilssen-Love, drums & percussion.Recorded live in concert at Kongsberg July 2008.
Church organ works
The three piece group from Portugal explore in ten tracks the possibilities of the church organ. The members play in various combinations on different organs. The outcome is very varied. The opening piece is barely audible, but the second piece is a loud, repitive, all register open one. Of course it's hard to see this music without any religious overtones, but Osso Exotico don't give a clue in that direction: all their pieces are untitled. Meditative pieces in most cases, but less minimal then …
Time of the Last Persecution
Time of the Last Persecution is Bill Fay's second and final album for the Deram label, originally released in 1971. An absolute classic of melancholy (borderline morbid) folk-rock that falls somewhere between Pearls Before Swine, Leonard Cohen, and a suicide prevention hotline. Time of the Last Persecution is almost single-mindedly obsessed with end times so it's fitting that this brilliant album would be his last release for over 30 years. Now that Fay is back with a new and highly laude…
Black Magic & Mustache
Seattle-based Simon Henneman's first solo vinyl release is here. Mr. Henneman has worn many hats in the musical vortex of the Seattle sub-underground, most "famously" as one of the Diminished Men, who released an LP on the Sun City Girls Abduction label in 2009. That LP gave the lucky few who procured a copy an idea of the talents of that great band. Here, Mr. Henneman strikes out on his own and creates a solo journey of a much more intimate palette. Playing every instrument on the reco…
The Magic Bridge
Gatefold double LP version. Includes a CD with three bonus tracks, plus lyric sheet inserts. Richard Dawson has been a much-loved musical spectacle in his native Newcastle for many years now, a skewed troubadour who sings and plays guitar with a rare intensity and a very singular style. Beguiled northern audiences have long awaited the arrival of recordings that capture Dawson's genius, and it has finally arrived with his album The Magic Bridge, a 10-song collection out on CD (Pink Triangle…
Brokeback And The Black Rock
In the fall of 2010, when Douglas McCombs convened a new version of the band, Brokeback hadn't played a live show for more than two years and had not recorded any new music for eight. The band, a long-running side project for Tortoise and Eleventh Dream Day's Douglas McCombs, had stiffened up, sometimes getting lost in a welter of meticulously constructed electronics. McCombs's idea was not to start over, exactly, but to start fresh, approaching similar harmonic content from a different directio…
Martian Landscapes
I have never been to Mars, but sometimes i drop by... pictures and films we have access to give us a false impression that we already know something. My Mars is still populated with images from our childhood linked with hundreds of films and science fiction novels. i sympathize with misinterpretation of the illusion caused by old telescopes, as if the surface of Mars was covered with a network of irrigation canals being a proof of high civilization. combination of curiosity and fear stemm…
Rubaiyat Of Dorothy Ashby
Incredible work from the amazing Dorothy Ashby – a brilliant set of funky and spiritual tunes, set to full backings from Chicago soul arranger Richard Evans! This album is easily one of Ashby's greatest, and it's dedicated to the writings of Omar Khayyam – one of the forces guiding Dorothy's more spiritual sound at the end of the 60s, clearly opened up in a way that's not unlike the direction of Alice Coltrane's work, but a lot more focused and a lot more funky! Ashby not only plays her…
Untitled
Penultimate Press is proud to release a unique vinyl of the only known recordings by Danish artist Poul Gernes.Poul Gernes only ever recorded just under 20 minutes of music. His entire musical production is therefore on this LP. The recording was done on a Tandberg Recorder at Poul Gernes’ house in the south of Sweden in 1969. He is playing an old harmonium salvaged from a local primary school. The result is an informal quasi-drone work, which, along with the ambient sounds and domestic interfe…
Mitosis
"12k kicks off its 11th year with a new release that takes the label down new sonic pathways. Caught between the organic and electronic minimalism that 12k is known for and the unconventional Japanese pop musings and songwriting style of Happy, Moskitoo's Drape is an infectiously strange, bleepy, and dreamy debut release. Sanae Yamasaki (Moskitoo) hails from Sapporo, Japan in Hokkaido, the country's northern-most prefecture. Perhaps a reaction to the cool climate of her home, her multi-instrumen…