New Arrivals
Einstein on the Beach
Widely credited as one of the greatest artistic achievements of the 20th century, this rarely performed work launched its director Robert Wilson and composer Philip Glass to international success when it was first produced in Avignon, France in 1976, with subsequent performances in Europe and in New York at the Metropolitan Opera. It is still recognized as one of their greatest masterpieces. Now, nearly four decades after it was first performed and twenty years since its last production, Einstei…
Reflex
Reflex is the fifth solo album by Switzerland's Reto Mder (Ural Umbo, Sum of R, Pendulum Nisum) as RM74. A creepy, paranoid record of sinister melody and complex structure. Electronics, organ, synthesizer, guitars and other instrumentation drifts in and out of bizarre atmospherics. The tracks gain emotional resonance as they move among vexing swells of dense, rotting psychedelia. Presented in a heavy matte sleeve printed with dark metallic ink. Includes fold out insert. Photograph by Phill…
Chestnut Thornback Tar
As Norway’s premier noise troupe, Lasse Marhaug and John Hegre’s Jazkamer project has a certain status to uphold. Rather than resting on their well-earned laurels, Marhaug and Hegre keep a gruelling schedule of shows and an even more gruelling schedule of releases, which has culminated recently in an ambitious album-a-month series spanning throughout 2010. While the concept itself is now fairly well worn, what has astonished this time around is the sheer quality the duo has managed to ke…
9
Always well worth picking up, a new edition of the Yeti magazine/journal/compilation CD arrives. As ever, it's full of exclusives too: on the music front the CD includes rare and unreleased material by Woodsist band The Art Museums, US Girls, Ko Melina (of The Dirtbombs), new Captured Tracks band Aias, Teenage Panzercorps, Murder City Devils frontman Spencer Moody, new Mississippi Records artist Marisa Anderson and a selection of mightily obscure vintage cuts - the most notable of which …
Rule Of Inference
next to his prolific work as an electronic composer, improviser and producer, "rule of inference" once more features schmickler's as yet less known yet marvelous work as a composer and arranger for classical instrumental settings. similar to his widely regarded album "param" (2001), the album is a collection of various settings, all of them recorded over the course of the last years. "rule of inference" unveils a conception that marks various departures along the history of music: the alb…
Inner Voices/Nerve Language
"Karl Bauer and Eva Saelens (Axolotl and Inca Ore respectively) are two like-minded Bay area psychers operating on two opposing levels. Axolotl marks the A-side with skyward streaking drones and ethereal loops tinged and focused, ringing with the joyous bliss of upward passage. An endless array of vocals, electronics, and violin looping and looping, building and growing: stasis. Inca Ore makes her craft from an Earth-bound level. Oneness with her surroundings, roots firmly planted. Eerie incanta…
Enlightenment / Phrenesia
Holy Strays follows up his scuzzy debut tape for NNF with two surprisingly lush and undeniably ace electronic trips. The meld of sparse, reverberating drums and plangent psych licks on 'Enlightenment' calls to mind Forest Swords jamming with a lo-fi Raime, on some sweet Hoffman's in a cabin in the Alps, after listening to loads of Amon Duul. Flipsude 'Phrenesia' is a moodier counterpoint, sucking us in with wormholing synthline while blunted programmed beats and a lone rave mistress vocal…
Around The World In A Daze
DVD-Audio release, total Content: 110 min. NTSC format, All Region. "Leading new-music composer Phil Kline debuts a major work on this new surround sound DVD. Heard here for the first time, this 65-minute studio composition was commissioned by Starkland to premiere on this high-resolution surround-sound DVD. Daze is Kline's longest work and biggest commission to date. Daze is also likely the largest work so far commissioned for a high-resolution surround-sound recording. Performers include the u…
relax most of your muscles
a blurry midlife crisis for all children of the revolution! the A side of this psychedelic bumcrack is filled with 10 locked grooves, all vocal, some different panned brainbubbles, featuring one loop of Dennis Tyfus' personal alarm clock. All of these sounds played simultaneously at the 'Relax most of your muscles' Dennis Tyfus' solo exhibtion at Be Part in Waregem, Belgium, providing a non stop soundtrack that coincided with large paintings and around 20 film loops and drawings which cre…
Raw and the cooked
Collaborative compositions by Jean Claude Jones (electro acoustic bass and live electronics), Loic Kessous (computer and live electronics), Stephen Horenstein (baritone saxophone). Recorded and mixed at Kadima Studio, Jerusalem, May-June, 2006
Refuse This Gift
The third album Refuse This Gift from Bear Claw is one of two records that ended up being part of a double whammy of releases from Sickroom Records just recently for me. Paired up, at least in my mind, with the excellent Conformists record (which you can find a couple posts below) Bear Claw gives a bit more of a traditional spin on the Chicago math/noise-rock sound compared to their label mates. With their third album Refuse This Gift the band hasn’t deviated all that much from their pr…
Mask Rewind
LISFRANK was an obscure one-man project from Savona area, Italy, active from 1980 onwards but not releasing much music ever since apart from a few tracks via the own Mask Productions label in 1982 and 1983. The first and only LISFRANK stand-alone release was the 12”EP “Man Mask” (Mask Productions, MKX 01, 1982), definitely one of the best and rarest early 80’s minimal electro 12”s ever and on top of most want lists ever since, including the super hit “It’s Life”, as well as “Violence in m…
Chance Meeting (Reissue / Special Edition)
United Jnana is pleased to reissue the debut album from Nurse With Wound, Chance Meeting on a Dissecting Table of a Sewing Machine and an Umbrella, originally released on United Dairies in 1979. This special edition CD features a digipack with the original artwork restored and an expanded booklet with archival material chosen by Steven Stapleton. The disc has been remastered from the original analog tapes and features bonus material. Chance Meeting enjoys a reputation as one of the most singular…
Metal Box
deluxe 3Xcd EDITION "Metal Box is the second PIL album and their masterpiece. One of these rare things that crosses the sky of rock from time to time. Formed by John lydon after the split of a well known band, PIL turns the back to the past : with cynicism. Exit the image shaped by Mc Laren, place to the music, a powerful funk carried by the hypnotic bass of Jah Wooble that sometimes evokes Holger Czukay of Can, striated by the minimalist riffs of Keith Levene (between James Blood Ulmer a…
23 panoramas de fréquences
“23 Frequencies Panoramas - Urban and peri-urban sound-images of Lyon, Saint-Etienne and in between. This record contains about twenty sound images: recordings, or edited recordings, which have been carried out for a few years in Lyon, Saint-Etienne and in betweens. The used recordings have never been distorted or transformed, except a slight filtration when necessary, to reduce some undesirable frequencies, or to reinforce others, which are highly desirable. These sound images deal with …
Induced Musical Spasticity: B.C. Free Music Society (1984-2009)
Major archival unearthing that makes available for the first time the bulk of the 'official' releases - plus a ton of unreleased material - from the mythic Butte County Free Music Society, a collective of musical oddballs, 'noise' musicians, art pranksters, record collectors and rock/roll fans who modeled themselves on the Los Angeles Free Music Society in order to create an umbrella organization that would shelter 'out' musicians during times of musical drought, this one taking place in the ear…
For Pau Torres
Catalan musician Ferran Fages, known for his guitar work as much as his work with turntables and electronics, delivers here a striking album of evocative, nocturnal electric guitar explorations. Bracketed by two intricate pieces of feedback, the centerpiece of this work maps out a carefully constructed arc of a story, bringing this album closer to that often misunderstood soundtrack-for-a-movie-yet-to-be-filmed genre. Ferran Fages: electric guitar and walkie-talkie. Composed, recorded and mixed …
One Voice
Harold Rubin, clarinet. Recorded: 2002. Released: 2002. 'If it wasn't for the fact that Harold Rubin (musician, painter and poet) lives and creates music in Israel, I'm pretty sure that he would have become one of the best-known icons of avant-garde jazz worldwide. Since I 'discovered' Harold 20 years ago, he never ceased to amaze me every time I hear him play live or hear any of his recorded music. His absolutely unique approach to his instrument Ð the clarinet Ð and to music in general is phen…
Miaux
"warm thick tears force their ways out of droopy eyes, children cover their ears and peppep is rubbing his underbelly with sandpaper.the general gloom MIAUX spreads on her sandwiches is darker than tatort and could easily replace any soundtrack of a fassbinder movie, the sad joy of a lady from sarajevo pushing her entire hands into a keyboard, don't ask her for a encore or you'll receive a grim reward!it seems that a new breath of electronic music is blowing over antwerp, all in a sort of kubin/…
Solo - Conversations with Franck Médioni
'The unique voice of double-bassist Joëlle Léandre moves back and forth between the worlds of theatre, poetry, dance, improvisation and composition. With passion and fire, she recounts her main sources of inspiration, encounters with John Cage, Peter Kowald, Giacinto Scelsi, Steve Lacy, Philippe Fénélon, Betsy Jolas, Derek Bailey, George Lewis, Anthony Braxton among others... CD: 38 minutes bass solo, Piednu, France, 2005. DVD: 33 minutes bass solo, Guelph Jazz Festival, Canada, 2009.' la…