New Arrivals
Mirror repair
Gastr Del Sol emerged from the remains of Bastro in 1992 with the brooding, mostly drumless album, ‘The Serpentine Similar’. This represented an unlikely evolution from the fury of Bastro, but evolution was only getting started - and ‘unlikely’ was one of the ongoing principles in Gastr Del Sol’s approach. Before the sessions for the second album, Bundy Brown left the group and David Grubbs asked Jim O’Rourke to come play. 1994’s ‘Crookt, Crackt Or Fly’ tangled the clean lines of the original ba…
Protoplasm
Hand-stamped edition of 500 copies** Blackest Ever Black present recordings of Black Rain's riveting performance at Corsica Studios in October 2012. It's the first release by Stuart Argabright (Ike Yard/Death Comet Crew) since BEB compiled and reissued their seminal cyberpunk missive 'Now I'm Just A Number: Soundtracks 1994-95' on LP, and offers a murky glimpse of what to expect from the Black Rain album due in early 2014. There are few others who do this sound with such authenticity and …
Take a chance In the void: Harold Norse at the Beat Hotel
Historical recordings made by Harold Norse when he was living with William Burroughs, Brion Gysin and Gregory Corso at the notorious Beat Hotel in Paris during the early sixties. By the time Norse arrived in Paris he had traveled extensively in Morocco and Europe and his poetry was already championed by people like W. H. Auden, William Carlos Williams and Tennessee Williams.
Together with Sinclair Beiles, Burroughs and Gysin, Norse was one of the first to apply the cut-up method. He made the tec…
We Will Always Be
There's a disarming honesty to the way Michigan-based husband and wife duo Windy & Carl communicate with one another. A blog post from Windy, published in late 2011, describes the making of We Will Always Be, framing it in the context of their relationship. "Yeah, we have had bumps in the road, and on occasion it seems as if we may never recover from these bumps, but we do," she wrote. That type of candor doesn't stop at the written word; it also bleeds through into the duo's music. Often their …
Goose vibrations
GOL (Jean-Marcel Busson, Frédéric Rebotier, Ravi Shardja, and Samon Takahashi). GOL was formed in 1988 in Paris by Jean-Marcel Busson, Frédéric Rebotier, Ravi Sharda and Samon Takahashi. The quartet embodies, within a post-dada spirit, a lost rural tradition. GOL plays flute, horns, guitar, violin, toys, selfmanufactured instruments, tapes, turntables, voices, various percussion instruments and electronics, an appropriateness of both traditional string instrument and handmade low fi equipment. G…
Cat mask at huggie temple
“The outcome of a collective trudge across the European/American desert for 40 days and 40 nights.†Cat Mask at Huggie Temple is the superb debut 12†by Desert Heat, a dust bowl rock trio of Steve Gunn, John Truscinski and Cian Nugent. The trio originally came together when they played a bowling alley followed by an appearance at Tusk Festival in Newcastle, UK where the trio jammed together like they had been a band for years. Part of the group\'s success hinges on John and Ste…
Sketches From New Brighton
*Deluxe 2LP Edition Now In Stock* Scott Morgan makes a welcome return with his seventh album of amorphous ambient drift as Loscil. Since 2001 the Vancouver resident has eked out a special niche with his much-loved Kranky releases, a sound that's equal parts dub techno momentum and tenderly organic sound design, one which consistently and carefully treads a fine line between crepuscular, chamber-like melancholy and widescreen optimism. 'Sketches From New Brighton' is an impressionistic col…
Music for Earbuds
Music for Earbuds is composed entirely from headphone feedback which makes some surprisingly organic (as well as electronic) sounds, Stephen Cornford writes to introduce his new CD. A collection of sounds stark and stubborn, as a listener you hit against their form, slide on their surfaces. These sounds so alien yet alluring call you to spend time with them, attend to them. They mark the edges of hearing and understanding. The edge here is the ear that hears as listening encounters nothing but i…
In Solo
Restocked, very last copies around: Doyle is another matter. This man is dangerous - he never plays anything you could recognize, just furious blasts of rage. His solo on "Domiabra" couldn't be written down, or even sorted out. It sounds more like raw energy than anything I've ever heard. He's nasty, man." These liner notes to the original issue of Noah Howard's 'The Black Ark' may define perfectly also this new, incredible album by Arthur Doyle, this time 'in solo' for sax, flutes and voi…
So sorry
A meeting between Japanese sound artist Takahiro Kawaguchi and two american improvisors, Nick Hoffman (head of the Pilgrim Talk label) and Aaron Zarzutzki. Recorded by Brian Sulpizio at The Chateau, Chicago, in September 2011 and then edited and mixed by Giuseppe Ielasi in Oreno.Numbered edition of 250 copies. Black vinyl (cut at SST), screenprinted cover on heavy grey stock.
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…
Stroomtoon II
"In December 2011 I recorded the album Stroomtoon, which was released by the French Nuun label the year after. The music was constructed using recordings from improvisations with a setup that I was trying out for upcoming live performances. It's the same setup that I still use nowadays, mainly consisting of an old Phillips analogue tone generator and a selection of effects units. When making Stroomtoon, it felt like moving into new territory that was worth explore more. While that album is very …
Winds & Skins
Winds & Skins transpired to be the very last set of recordings made by Afro-Cuban percussionist Sabu Martinez, who sadly passed away precisely one month after this December 1978 session was committed to tape. The album draws a line under a career that saw the illustrious musician performing alongside Dizzy Gillespie and Art Blakey as well as releasing a string of out-and-out classic Latin jazz records. Here the noted conguero teams up with the lauded saxophonist/flautist Sahib Shihab, who himsel…
Occlusions
… Occlusion is a loose framework for a multi-channel, freely improvised piece of LIVE ELECTRONIC MUSIC, performed without the aid or consent of pre-recorded or even pre-arranged materials of any kind. A given realization will last between 10 and 30 minutes ; time is elastic. Every effort has been made to avoid divisible rhythms (although mistakes are occasionally made) ... Still, I consider it a "kind" of Dance Music. These two realizations, recorded a week apart at festivals in France and…
Continuation
Recorded in the 1960s with Marshall Allen featured on Jupiterian flute and Danny Thompson on Neptunian libflecto. The original LP was pressed in very small numbers at the end of the 60′s, with purposely mislabeled details in the liner notes in typical fashion to Ra’s output during that phase. The contents are believed to be from 1963-64, a period that produced some of the composers most revered works and an era when Ra relocated to New York from Chicago. What we do know about Continuation i…
Ensemble Pearl
Double LP edition. Cosmic, heavy amplified rock drops and ripples, auras radiate and expand into cloud forms, through which lightning bolts. Tides rise, the moons wax upon a place somewhere between Link Wray, Hex-era Earth and early Tangerine Dream. The echoes return, leaving a trail that blows and drifts, creating a separate piece. Ensemble Pearl are Atsuo, William Herzog, Michio Kurihara and Stephen O'Malley. Their debut album also features the elemental forces of Eyvind Kang and Timba H…
HaLF-UNReLeaSeD MaDNeSS
Very cool compilation of unreleased BeNe GeSSeRiT tracks. The husband & wife duo of Alain Neffe & Nadine Bal counted as one of the most frivolous & quite impressive live acts around during the eighties. On top of a catchy but minimal synth basis created by B GHoLa (Alain Neffe) runs the strange, & playfull voice by BeNeDiCT G (Nadine Ball). This is minimal synth pop for the crazy ones among us, but aren't we all a bit mad? Limited edition of 400 copies. Cover sleeve & insert by B GHoLa
Turkish Free Music
A special 26 only copies box, with an extra LP: SAS #40 with different front cover theen regular ed (paste-on; the carpet motifs are divided in 26 parts, so if you put together all 26 ltd ed, you'll see the full design as on the regular ed) + postcard- SAS #41 with different front cover theen regular ed (paste-on; artwork by Huseyin Ertunc) + color postcard + another insert on high quality photo paper with 12 pic from the concert- SAS #42 with different front cover theen regular ed (paste-on; em…
Song Islands Vol. 2
Song Islands Vol. 2, released under the Mount Eerie moniker as opposed to Microphones like the original Song Islands compilation, is a sizable compendium of songs covering from the 2002 release of Song Islands to the present day. Coming in at a total of 31 tracks, Song Islands Vol. 2 continues Phil Elverum’s powerful and decidedly exploratory musical style. The compilation maintains an incredible sense of intimacy, even when the vocals get choral, which is on the precipice of being the rule as o…
Broken Hearted Dragonflies
There is a legend in Burma stating that swarms of male dragonflies gather to join in choruses of high-pitched tones to court their mates. The ones that don't succeed in mating eventually scream so loud that their chests explode and they drop dead to the ground. These recordings are a tribute to this legend. Droning cicadas, dragonflies, and other insects display their charm as masters of the high frequency airwaves, recorded live and unprocessed by Tucker Martine in the lush settings of L…