New Arrivals
Strait Gait
The Southern Records Latitudes juggernaut thunders into town once more, this time driven by Kranky's very own Boduf Songs, aka Mat Sweet, who for the purposes of this release teams up with a couple of collaborators and strays slightly from his established sonic parameters, venturing into the realms of dark, cinematic drone for first piece ' Please Extract My Teeth With Your Rustiest Pliers (For Redemptive)', whose title is not only massively 'eww' inducing, but commits a grammatical felony at th…
Centralia
Mountains’ music is defined by slow builds, and subtle transformations, textures and melodic lines that evolve in a variety of ways to create grand soundscapes and acutely detailed compositions. For Centralia, the duo of Koen Holtkamp and Brendon Anderegg wrote and recorded in a way that mirrors the pace of their music. While the current trend in experimental music is towards hyper-prolificity, Mountains have taken their time on Centralia, resulting in an album that is as precise as it is boundl…
Nowhere
1998 reissue, orginally released in 1984. A combination of spacey electro-pop, dub and dark avant-rock influences, Phantom Band is one of the most authentically weird, essential and yet surprisingly overlooked organisms orbiting the Can universe. This is the third and final album from the project, masterminded by Can drummer Jaki Liebezeit, featuring Dominik von Senger (Dunkelziffer, Damo Suzuki Band/Network) on guitar, Helmut Zerlett (e.g. Dunkelziffer, Unknown Cases) on keyboards and Sheldon A…
Helbzeit
We enter an open landscape, rich in impressions, and then leave the beaten track. Here and there we notice something that merits closer inspection. After a shorter or longer pause, we venture a little in another direction. We might simply take the day as it comes and without concern let everything that has been and that we have experienced go to the winds. Or perhaps perceive the singular aspects shown by this landscape with an acute awareness. Use them to recall past events and experiences, thu…
Amber Sea
Duo of Agnes Szelag & Marielle Jakobsons (aka DARWINSBITCH). They create electroacoustic songs on many instruments such as violin, cello, voice, bass, gezhong, piano, & accordian. Their scores are often conceptually or process-driven, resulting in their unique style of electroacoustic music, reminiscent of Scandinavian free folk, lullabies, dramatic film scores, & electronic improvised music
5 More Dialogues
Here are two men whose musical natures are obviously rich and their backgrounds complex - back to Stinky Winkles in the pianist's case, back to Amalgam and the Spontaneous Music Ensemble in the saxophonist's - but who reduce, in the critic/analyst's shorthand, to tiling or fabric. Tessellations. Moiré. Does that convey all you need to know about Veryan Weston and Trevor Watts, secure in the understanding that these are self-chosen metaphors, not imposed from outside? Needless to say, no, …
The state we are in
The first thing this CD reminded me of was Tape...then I checked out the press release and it turns out that Tape's Johan Berthling (also very recently sighted on that Fire! with Jim O'Rourke record) is in fact one-third of this band, the other two being Andreas Soderstrom (Ass) and Per Eklund on drums. It is, as you would expect, gently paced instrumental stuff, slightly pastoral-sounding, with intertwining guitars and a some subtle Hammond organ and trumpet bits. This is a mightily rel…
A closely woven fabrik
For a number of years as West Head Project, we've been making site specific sound events and recordings at outdoor locations - initially these were held at West Head in Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park. We've gone on to play in special sites around Australia and this disc documents our work on Maria Island off the east coast of Tasmania where we were resident for 10 days, guests of 10 Days on the Island Festival and Parks and Wildlife Service Tasmania. Auditory transmogrification of Tasmani…
The Pattern Prism
Kraut-rock at heart, this is a brtual, cosmic melange of sound & rhythm, where Terry Riley-like keyboard motifs entwine w/ intense Battles-esque drumming, clouds of audio detritus, gamelan gongs, rewired synthesizers, & clashing feedback guitars. Oscilating between pools of crystal-clear ambience & miasmic clouds of dense noise, it spans entire decades of musical exploration: the fractured psych dreams of The United States of America, the dense weave of Stockhausen's Hymnen, the intensity of Con…
Boca Negra
For a band with only two members, this group gets an impressive variety of sounds. Rob Mazurek on cornet and Chad Taylor drummer also use the studio as an instrument, alternating between post bop jazz and near ambient soundscapes. Taylor's rhythmic sense is unerring throughout the album, whatever the tempo. Electronics are added at times, and add effect, especially at slower tempos making for spooky music along with slurred horn. "Green Ants" has sputtering cornet and rolling drums settin…
Destroying The Night Sky
A very special release with an unusual mix of sound: Using Cadaverous Condition's "To The Night Sky" album as source material for their tracks, all the aforementioned bands have created a unique new style of music. Call it metal ambient, drone metal or electronics metal, the result is something previously unknown and exciting. Hear Nurse With Wound doing one of their darkest tracks ever - listen to Controlled Bleeding's totally insane restructuring of a rock track, or be surprised by Nocturnal E…
Homage To Giacinto Scelsi
Awesome compilation in a limited edition of 300 hand-numbered copies. With Sébastien Roux / Eddie Ladoire, Rafael Toral, Elio Martusciello, David Toop, Terry Day, Matt Davies, Skoltz / Kolgen, Scanner, KK NULL, Alvin Curran, Efzeg, Eddie Prevost / John Butcher, Lawrence English, Rhodri Davies / Joe Williamson / Stefano Tedesco, Olivia Block...."We, the 'kids' (whowe?) should listen more to classical music. At least that's what Deutsche Grammophon wants, since they want us to buy their CDs. B…
Synesthesia
3rd release from duo of Rob Mazurek (ISOTOPE 217)+Chad Taylor (SAM PREKOP BAND) is a stark departure from the sound cultivated on their last LP. Utilizing electronics, found sounds, moog & studio manipulations they have made not just a jazz record but one that defies categorization in any particular genre. With assistance of studio engineer JOHN McENTIRE they overdubbed, dissected & reassembled a selection of recorded & found sounds making a record that is not only very listenable but is …
Ecotono
“The word Ecotono is built from two roots. Eco (oikos/casa) and tono (tonos/ tensión). An ecotono, or ecotone, is a habitat created by the juxtaposition of distinctly different habitats; an edge habitat; or an ecological zone or boundary where two or more ecosystems meet. It is a transition area between two distinct habitats, where the ranges of the organisms in each bordering habitat overlap, and where there are organisms unique to the transition area. An ecotone region provides conditions of b…
Our Prayer
Another previously-unreleased gem from South African pianist/composer Chris McGregor and his cohorts in '60s UK free jazz. Our Prayer was culled from the same sessions that produced the also never-released Up To Earth in 1969 and was produced by Joe Boyd and engineered by John Wood at Sound Techniques studio. The previous year they had signed to Joe Boyd's illustrious Witchseason production company alongside Fairport Convention, John and Beverley Martyn, Nick Drake and the Incredible String Ba…
Let\'s Make Better Mistakes Tomorrow
Let's Make Better Mistakes Tomorrow is the third full-length CD from the young Polish musician Tomasz Bednarcyzk. Following Summer Feelings and Painting Sky Together (Room40), Bednarczyk naturally continues his process of utilizing mainly treated piano and guitar to create fragile, lingering structures that hover around only a few fundamental notes. Let's Make Better Mistakes Tomorrow is divided into two sections, split down the middle by 'The Sketch,' which was written in cooperation with Adria…
Can't Stop It! (Australian Post-Punk 1978-82)
Originally released in 2001. A long overdue compilation of Australia's incredible post-punk history, featuring the finest selection of bands from the period 1978-82, with many previously-unreleased tracks. This is a fantastically inventive and dynamic time in Australian music history, a time when Australia stepped out of the shadow of overseas influence and asserted its own musical identity for the first time. All of the bands on Can't Stop It! released their music independently, either t…
Daylight
Following on from their highly acclaimed appearance on the Treader Duos, here is a whole CD devoted to the highly compatible and innovative duo of saxophonist John Butcher and percussionist Mark Sanders. Their varied improvisations are heard at two afternoon concerts - one at the 2010 Freedom of the City festival in London, the other nearly a year later at Southampton University
Saturnian (Solo Saxophones, Volume 1)
Recorded live in concert at the Abrons Arts Center, NYC on October 15, 2009, Saturnian documents master saxophonist David S. Ware's triumphant return to performance following his kidney transplant in May 2009. This performance prompted features in The New York Times and on NBC Nightly News.Ware, in full peak of form, performed three extended pieces, each one on a different horn. "Methone" is on the saxello and "Pallene" features the stritch. David has played these lesser-known members of the sa…
Nemcatacoa
Achingly beautiful album fusing elements of everything from Earth to Windy & Carl, Stephen O'Malley, My Bloody Valentine, Fennesz, Keith Fullerton Whitman and Emeralds - miss out at your peril!!! Elm is the solo project of Jon Porras, one half of the deeply revered San Francisco drone lords, Barn Owl. Only his third release in solo mode, 'Nemcatacoa' has strong ties to his other project, but revolves around a lonelier and more personal agenda, with eight incredible tracks of widescreen Americana…