New Arrivals
Minimal Milan
Lovely compilation selected by Xiu (Oksana Rodionova) consisting of contemporary minimal electronic and deviant-techno artists based in Milan, Italy. Here's the label's mission statement as you could say: "The musical aesthetism defended by the label admits connections with post-modern qualities and challenges conventions for an innovative musical conversation between analogue instrumentation and technologies." The label will host various types of electronic music always seen throught a dark and…
5 05 - 3 Renotations of 1 act of cleaning a piano
A project by the german artist Franziska Koch, edited by Fink Edition, Zurich. "The cleaning of the piano in the house Franziska Koch - Once a year - recurring as of spring cleaning . On this is both spontaneously and passionately played in their living environment for young and old . In the resulting recording is heard, like the piano cleaned, is rubbed and wiped. Knocking noises and random poking against the instruments body give the piece its own rhythm, so as to connect by wiping over the …
Air Museum
Air Museum blurs the lines between acoustic and electronic music even more without sacrificing melody or the delicacy of their sound. It is an album of firsts. It was the first album that the acoustic instruments were not processed via a computer. Instead, the processing of the instrumentation (acoustic and electric guitar, cello, accordion, piano, bass etc.) was done using a variety of pedals, modular synths, and other analog techniques. While acoustic instruments were used extensively, …
Aoyama Crows
Aoyama Crows is the fifth album by Peter Brötzmann's Die Like a Dog Quartet. Saying the music can still surprise would be a lie. But that doesn't mean it lacks excitement, on the contrary. The performance, recorded at the Berlin Total Music Meeting in November 1999, contains all the elements necessary for an enticing free improv session. The rhythm section formed by Hamid Drake and William Parker is tried, tested, and true. The drummer can oscillate in and out of a pulse with incredible ease. He…
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…
Conflict
Continue reprints of the amazing tapes by Pierpaolo Zoppo aka Mauthausen Orchestra released on Aquilifer Sodality in the early eighties (Conflict also released on Broken Flag). Tape after tape Mauthausen Orchestra constitute, in a few years, the backbone of what we will know as an alienating and extremist style, made of metal nightmares and sonic torture , often dilated, dissected and extended up to the limit of endurance. Conflict carry us, once again, as real rituals of a civilization without …
23 formes en Elastique /The only authentic work
New work of Lionel Marchetti. 23 tracks. Length more than 77 minutes. Materials went through last 23 years of his field recording, composition, experiments and musiques concrètes composition studies. A backward looking by a forward creating. By this CD Lionel Marchetti built a labyrinth of elasticity, empty space, reality and its metamorphose. A material world of sound. The Only Authentic Work Yan Jun’s writing with inspiration of Marchetti’s music. 23 essays on music, literature, art and …
Harmonie du Soir
Rhys Chatham's 'Harmonie Du Soir' presents three compositions. The title track is the first major piece written for the configuration of six electric guitars, electric bass and drums since Die Donnergtter (1986). The second is The Dream of Rhonabwy, a piece written for large brass ensemble and percussion, realized in 2012 by a 70-piece brass band called Harmonie de Pontarlier, lead by the French conductor Patrick Erard. The last track on the CD version and bonus download for the vinyl edition is…
Stromboli
Field recordings of a volcano by Geir Jenssen, better known as Biosphere. Stromboli is an active volcano off the north coast of Sicily in the Mediterranean. The volcano has erupted many times, and is constantly active with minor eruptions, often visible from many points on the island and from the surrounding sea, giving rise to the island's nickname Lighthouse of the Mediterranean. The last major eruption was on April 13, 2009. Recorded at Stromboli's crater edge (924 m) on July 19th 2012…
El Pianista del Antifaz
French-Catalan musician Pascal Comelade's world is atypical and his inspirations come from many different sources -- from contemporary music to The Cramps -- making him one of the most creative and original artists of our times. At the crossroads of many different arts, never where he's expected, he never ceases to surprise his audience, taking the listener on poetic paths of primitive perception. El Pianista del Antifaz is the latest album in Comelade's galaxy. The artwork was designed by Du…
Kilo
Finnish experimental electronic musician Mika Vainio's first solo album for Blast First sees him return to his classic power electronics/heavy beats approach that made Pan Sonic garner a worldwide reputation. The album developed from Vainio's recent live sets to make 10 tersely-titled tracks inspired by the shipping container industry. Four stars in Mojo: "heavy-freight," The Quietus describes it as "fearsome."
Combines
The GGRIL is an ensemble of musicians who have decided to give a space to experiment with various forms of interactions possible in an orchestra without a conductor. The group brings together a dozen musicians from different backgrounds, but all eager to explore new territories offered by bands where the music is alive, freed from the linearity of writing. Powered by Tour de Bras, Rimouski, this set is a way to involve a large number of musicians and composers in the region around a unifying pro…
Active recovering music
Active Recovering Music (ARM) is a slide whistle ensemble led by sax player Masahiko Okura. All of the members play the slide whistle. Okura debuted ARM in concert with a five-member formation in 2008. He's since continued the group's activity (though their live performances are infrequent) with changing numbers of players. This is the recording of a performance by ARM--this time with eight members--which took place at Ftarri, Tokyo, in February 2013. Each of the three pieces was composed by Oku…
Tender Exploration
“Tender Exploration” reminds me of Hayao Miyazaki’s “Howl’s Moving Castle”, it’s an enormous metallic machine on spindly legs, walking like a toddler, but also steaming, mumbling, panting, a creature full of energy, and inhabited by a fire demon. “Drake”, the first track”, starts seeking for a structure almost clumsily, the band members seem to have to find each other. But soon they have a good chemistry and Bauer, who dominates this piece in spite of its name, adds his huge repertoire of tech…
In Four Parts (Tribute To John Cage)
Equipped with a modular synthesizer, a guitar and electronics Patrick Pulsinger and Christian Fennesz approach the master of the treatment of silence, John Cage. The piece on this album, which was recorded live at Wiener Konzerthaus, was inspired by the underlying attitude of Cage’s String Quartet in Four Parts. Upon invitation by the WIEN MODERN festival the two legendary electronic music protagonists tackled the composer’s early string quartet, took it apart and adapted it for two players, alw…
Alcor
restocked!! Alcor is the debut LP by a new voice from the Australian wilderness. Hailing from Ferntree Gully, Victoria, the music of Astor has thus far been appreciated only via a string of barely-distributed CDRs. Alcor gathers together the prime of these micro-editions and presents the material as a seductive and puzzling new whole. Field recordings of humble organic activity bend against a foundation of discreetly processed electronics/piano, creating sonorities that are as undefinable a…
Here Come The Cars
A year after the Clean's reunion LP Vehicle (also their first proper album ever) put them back on the international-pop radar in 1990, guitarist David Kilgour retreated with his new Revox tape machine (which he'd been singing about rapturously in his side-project Stephen and elsewhere: "Have you seen my new tape machine?!") and cut his first solo album, Here Come the Cars, issued by Flying Nun in 1991. From the jarring cover image of David through to the last note, Here Come the Cars is a specia…
Mimikry
2010 edition, long out of print, few copies resurfaced. Box Set, Limited Edition, Special Limited Box Edition - Album comes in a cardboard sleeve with tracks 11 and 12 as bonus tracks and as part of a box set including inserts. Having nicely set up the release of this album with their Ret Marut Handshake EP a few months back, Alva Noto and Blixa Bargeld (of Einsturzende Neubauten fame) deliver a set that exceeds all expectations. One of the most strikingly obvious comparisons to arise from …
Beaches Canyons
Debut album from NYC sound manipulation specialists, back in print on vinyl w/ download. Black Dice is an explosive, radical, and viciously unique rock & roll band. Based out of Brooklyn, NY, the trio is fiercely independent, doggedly disciplined, and uncompromisingly DIY in approach. Brothers Eric and Bjorn Copeland and Aaron Warren have spent over a decade recording, touring, and unleashing their bizarre musical doctrine on audiences the world over.By the time Beaches and Canyons made its reti…