New Arrivals
What A Beautiful Place
CD edition, lavishly packaged: In the last couple of years there's been no shortage of lost folk albums re-appearing for the world to enjoy once more, and the wonderful Numero Group label (which is fast becoming one of our most loved imprints...) has managed to find another. Hailing from the bleak northern city of Halifax, Catherine Howe was initially trained at drama school, gaining a brief stint in Doctor Who ('The Underwater Menace' for all you Whovians out there, wink wink) among othe…
Postepeno
poSTepeno is inspired by a multi-part collage created circa 1890 by an anonymous schizophrenic patient (known only as Frau ST) at the Viennese Oberdöbling asylum. The compositions (for piano and sine tones) morph musicalthemes through continual microtonal modifications. Sine tones are unstable, but nevertheless they consistently keep their individual frequency direction (up or down). In the chordal sense, the distance between the tones is subject to alteration. In this way the harmonic indicatio…
Book Of Nods
A new landscape is painted out of darkness by progressive strokes of the dawn. The finished piece is neither night nor day, but the transformation itself. Aidan Baker's (Nadja) "Book Of Nods" crests experimental peaks in similarly paced sonic transmigrations. His lustrous chimera blooms open in shifting onion layers built out of slow-moaning guitar, flute, organ and drums. The resonant frequencies of quietly crashing nodes vibrate the ozone with a sub-textural beating of multi-pianic fea…
Sempervirent
I spent two months in protected areas of Costa Rica making multichannel field recordings of the different forest ecosystems of Central America. Armed with a quadraphonic setup (IRT cross), a parabolic microphone, a hydrophone, and a scientist's passport, I went to nine main sites to record: the coastal evergreen forest, the tropical dry and deciduous forest, the mangroves, the wooded riverbanks and floodplains, and the forests altered in cultivated areas. The recordings were made at the S…
Ultrealith
Ultrealith' is an electro-acoustic sound-adventure exploring sounds that exist on the periphery of human perception, such as underwater recordings (such as fish-songs, crustaceans etc), ultrasounds (sonar of bats and dolphins, insects), electromagnetic signals and other textures. These recordings were sourced in the Amazonian rainforest, Africa, Canadian Newfoundland, northern Australia and in various parts of Europe.
Reverie
Reverie is the third collaboration between Antonio Testa and Stefano Musso after ten years from their last cd together "Prayer for the Forest", with this new potion the duo explore different slow-motion athmospheres, playing a wide range of acoustic instruments,and distilling healing sounds,that naturally relate with music-therapy. An album for the soul and the love of being in its entirety. Airy and suspended, "Rêverie" is inductive music for light-hearted moods .°. over any siege of though…
La Maieutique De La Quantique
All new Ilitch studio recording! An horrific grandchild springs from the magma: Ilitch'll itch your progadelic scratch with its well manicured talons of fire. This Ilitchian renaissance zigs deep space experimental and zags full metal Zuehl. Electronics chirp and howl like the opening coda of Susperia, then explode into Weidorje intensity fuzz violence, cheered on by a pecussive force that sounds like Mussolini being kicked to death. The shifting interplay between total rockers and extrat…
Praha Meditations
After the concert in Prague last year in may, we followed the proposalof friends to play some acoustic instruments spontaneously on top ofthe hill, in Troja, into a circle of stones installations.Zithers, Tubes, Bells, Rattle and Shells, Flutes..the sessions wereinspired from the special place and the spring's vibes in the wind. Therecordings that are a blueprint of the spirit of that day, were editedin studio by Alio Die, then Mathias Grassow added his electronic dronesto expand the poin…
Il Giardino Ermeneutico
The third collaboration with Zeit displays a wonderful and unique combination between acoustic sounds, field recordings and airy gentle electronic sounds.The sonic result maintains the natural atmospheres of the originalacoustic recordings, done at the time of the Raag drone theory's sessions in Lunigiana, Italy at Chiostro dell’Annunziata and the Wood Sanctuary in August 2006. Here the treatments enriche the mixture with a new sensible touch that subtly transports the listener towards anen…
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…
Grass
Eyvind Kang’s newest CD collects quiet new compositions spanning the past five years, which he considers to be among his truly breakthrough works. Music for solo piano, string quintet and more take the unique sonic environments of Morton Feldman to an entirely new place via the metaphors of agricultural poetry, Chinese medicine, sweatlodge and Ikat weaving. Mesmerizing work from the elusive and ever-stimulating mind of Eyvind Kang!
Vivian & Ondine
A brand new album from one of the most revered and acclaimed ambient composers of our time, Vivian & Ondine takes the form of a single, three-quarter hour piece, once again constructed from William Basinski's signature style of tape loop manipulation. While the narrative ebb and flow is largely pinned to a single tape fragment, Basinski merged a further "dozen or so" that sunk into the mix in just the right way, adding to the aura of fluctuation and continuous evolution that's so essential to th…
Out Of This World's Distortions
Farmers By Nature – drummer Gerald Cleaver, bassist William Parker, and pianist Craig Taborn – a fully-improvising unit, a complete musical collective. Each of these men are highly regarded & admired composers and bandleaders in their own right; their coming together to create new music is always an auspicious and deeply fruitful occasion. Superbly attuned listeners and masterful players of their respective instruments, they are without question one of the finest improvising units / musical grou…
Perdition Hill Radio
2nd full-length from self-styled black ambient guitar overlord. Like Earth's seminal "Hex" before it, this invokes the ghosts of a lost America & drags the rotting carcass of country music through a swamp of noise & drone. The chugging, blown-out treble & isolated darkness of Xasthur is all present & correct, but there are also echoes of William Basinski & Deaf Center hidden amongst the clouds of radio static.
Four Aims
The Four Aims is the much-anticipated second full-length by the long-running duo of Mick Flower (Vibracathedral Orchestra, Sunroof, Michael Flower Band) and Chris Corsano (Flaherty/Corsano, Jandek, Bjork, Sunburned). In the couple years since their debut, The Radiant Mirror (Textile), the two have toured and recorded frequently, expanding their range to include a mind-boggling array of free sound. "I, Brute Force" kicks off the record with their signature-- one of the most original in rock/free/…
Nazoranai
Keiji Haino (guitar, vocals & synth), Stephen O'Malley (bass guitar) & Oren Ambarchi (battery). Recorded by Chris Fullard at Gaîté Lyrique, Paris 8th November 2011. Edited by Oren Ambarchi in Sydney January 2012. Mixed by Joe Talia & Oren Ambarchi at Chinatown, Melbourne 8th February 2012. Mastered by Joe Talia at Chinatown, Melbourne 17th April 2012. Vinyl cut by Rashad Becker at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin April 2012. Artwork: Lars Teichmann 'Bathing Girls' & 'Nymphos' (detail, 2010, …
We Are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace & Magic
In May 2011, Foxygen's Sam France and Jonathan Rado nervously handed off a CD-R of their homemade mini-opus Take the Kids Off Broadway to producer and visionary Richard Swift after his performance in a Lower East Side club. The duo, who had just mixed and burned the disc that very night, had been devotees of Swift's outsider-pop oeuvre since high school, when they first began recording their own pubescent forays into oddball rock n' roll (At least a dozen records were finished before they …
Drum Dance to the Motherland
Deluxe reissue of this outsider holy grail, cosmic free jazz at the top!!There's not another record on the planet that sounds even remotely like vibraphonist khan jamal's eccentric, one-of-a-kind masterpiece, drumdance to the motherland. in its improbable fusion of free jazz expressionism, black psychedelia, & full-on dub-like production techniques, drumdance remains a bracingly powerful outsider statement thirty-four years after it was recorded live at the catacombs club in philadelphia…
Grisp
Running the gamut of improv, concrète, industrial tape music, and cut-up sounds. Featuring appearances by MITCHELL BROWN (GASP), AARON HEMPHILL (LIARS), PETER KOLOVOS (OPEN CITY), RICK POTTS (LAFMS, SOLID EYE, AIRWAY), and source material by SMEGMA and the HATERS. Partially collects material from the Beat (777 Was 666), Grisp, and DDT (Chondritic Sound) cassettes. For those that say things like, "I don't really listen to CDs"—you're totally lame.
Gayageum Sanjo
Sub Rosa presents a release by composer/violinist Baudouin de Jaer. Gayageum Sanjo: compositions for 12-string gayagrum, Prelude, 5 sanjo and 10 studies. According to legend and to recent archeological digs, the gayageum is a millennial zither-like instrument featured in all Korean traditional repertoires. "Sanjo" is usually translated as "scattered melodies." This style of music was informed by southwestern shamanic music (Sinawi) and the great epic songs (Pansori) from the same regi…