New Arrivals
Black Sun Ensemble Vol. 2
"Lion's second volume of the Black Sun Ensemble's recordings for their classic first album contains an alternate version of that album, including the tracks from the Camera Obscura label CD (2000) version of that album -- well, sort of. When sifting through the masters while preparing the Lion reissue of the real, actual first Black Sun Ensemble album -- as issued in 1985 on Pyknotic -- it became clear that many of the original LP tracks were also on the Camera Obscura CD release, but under the …
a two
The Kyoto-based musician Yusaku Arai is known for his production work in the avant-garde scenes of Japanese hip-hop and R&B. On this solo album, though, he offers more lengthy, piano-centric meditations that use the techniques of musique concrète. Arai’s compositions on the A-side emerged out of a reflection on the corporeal and interwoven relationship between his own body and things he encountered in the world—the ocean, a flower petal, a plastic sheet, a hand. His intent is to represent a proc…
Tightrope Walker
Tip! *315 copies limited edition* Barstool Mountain returns to Absurd Exposition after the well-regarded "III" CD from 2022. On "Tightrope Walker", the project's debut LP, Mattias Gustafsson continues his "harried, frazzled, grizzled" experiments in tape mangling with his Altar of Flies alter-ego. The album furthers the buildings-crumbling barrage of "III", leaving just enough room to realize that the walls are coming down hard.
Leadlined
*2023 stock* Leadlined is a 35-minute lamentation of the perverse ideology of the English, shaped by sound collage and heavy electronics. Heaving drones of memory churn the decayed hum of modernism and the spiritual bus routes of the past. £40 million of military hardware flying low over the colonial jugular; the knifing wind off the Kentish coast, shearing through the tendons of Roman roads and Saxon shores. Through the record’s mediation of these imagined pasts and displaced futures — the sine…
Unlimited Dream Company
Unlimited Dream Company is the latest barrage of rhythmic industrial noise from Iker Ormazabal Martinez. The release is 40 minutes of tense sleep paralysis in which piledriver basses, blown out kicks, slicing synths and growls of feedback straddle sub pressure drones. IOM’s voice is minced by this machine churn: the infernal drill master swallowed up and regurgitated by his nightmares in a fugue of recoiling anguish. Bringing to mind the great Esplendor Gemoterico, IOM channels a torrent of frus…
Hand / Fist
Noise Against Fascism flexes their tendons, clenches their fist and pulls back from the brink to deliver a blistering cacophony of harsh electronics for a new release on Brachliegen. Hand/Fist is aural struggle against a feeling of contemporary socio-political melancholia, manifest in two differing approaches to confrontational noise and bludgeoning tone. In the wake of a relentless decimation of social communality, Mathias Kristersson cites the importance of art and utopian ideals for both the …
Break Down
Brachliegen are proud to present Break Down, the first release from Sakostamu, the collaborative project of Vasilis Sakkos (Casual Nun) and Tasos Stamou. The pair layer chanting vocal groans, wandering bells, weaving drones and haunting plucked strings through a four track tape recorder; this ritualised process builds a rich textual palette, burrowing deep to create a den of sonic transcendence, a place where shared cultural histories and individual wounds are broken down and confronted. A work …
pearly
Pearly is a fizzing, hallucinatory noise release from Tom Betteridge, consisting of two oleaginous sound poems, entirely improvised with minimal stitching and post-processing. Phantasmatic vocal improvisations are mulched into something oblique to speech, becoming sharded utterances part-lost in swathes of noise. Working with cassette tape recorders & close miking techniques, Betteridge upends the standard listening hierarchy of aural objects; tipping the scales, the human voice brushes against …
Pray For Your Prey
Recording live on a rainy night at Brussels in October 2017 “Pray For Your Prey” will capture your attention with it’s s striking power. An eclectic mixture of noise, experimental, free jazz and improvised music blended exemplary together creating a volcanic atmosphere.
Soma
*2023 stock* The duο’s work focuses on the creative fusion of composition and improvisation, where links between experienced and ideal sound are constantly being formed and deformed. This double CD reflects the two dimensions of Soma. The first CD presents the close musical liaison between Anisengos and Atzakas, along with three additional trios with Michalis Siganidis. The second CD features guest musicians, Savvina Yannatou, Maria Thoidou and Michalis Siganidis, who form trios, quartets and qu…
Locum Windsock
The Darkening Scale is the solo project of David Janssen aka Ted The Loaf of Renaldo & The Loaf. A purely digital affair, DS started in 2006 when RATL was on hold. The Entomology of Sound was the first album and came out as digital file and a very limited CDr. David says about it: "Back in 2006, much to my surprise, I found myself making music again after a long gap. Starting at the bottom of a steep learning curve, The Entomology of Sound was the first result". Several albums followed, one of t…
Visceral Underskinnings
Hastings of Malawi are Heman Pathak, David Hodes and John Grieve. They recorded the album in one night in 1981 with no plan and no idea of what they were doing. They played drums, clarinet, synthesiser and piano but also made use of things that they found lying around the studio – old records, cookery books, telephone directories and a telephone. The recordings were played down the phone to randomly dialled numbers and the reactions added to the recording. All three had been involved in the reco…
Fishes
Geins't Naït was founded in Nancy, France, in 1986 by Thierry Merigout and Vincent Hachet, both students at the Architecture School of Nancy. A year later Laurent Petitgrand joined the band. Their sound is often described as an equivalent of bands like Einstürzende Neubauten, Coil or Test Dept., but Geins't Naït is not pure classic Industrial. While Geins't Naït offers rough pieces of music as an extension of its punk attitude, Petitgand refines them to create some musicality within the post-ind…
Tomorrowstartstonight
The first duet album by Rhys Chatham and David Fenech, two well-known musicians of the experimental scene. It is a long piece of music in a minimalist spirit, where the two guitarists meet and merge with Rhys’ trumpets, flutes and vocals and David’s small percussion.This record has an organic feel and natural development that makes it unique. Tomorrow starts tonight !
Rhys Chatham is best known for his compositions for electric guitar orchestra… he began his musical career as a harpsichord tuner…
Fulufulu Paupepa Paupapa
GBK are an Austrian free jazz trio that isn't afraid of being groovy. The band was founded in 2007 after a first meeting the year before, being thrown together in an improvised music session. They performed many years under the name of KGB before changing their name recently due to Russian war against Ukraine. All three musicians are happy to swap roles in their trio, therefore abstract experimental sounds have the same place in their repertoire as groove and melody. Drummer Didi Kern works both…
Continuing A Worn Out Tradition III
*300 copies limited edition* Archaic Vaults – a label operating between London and Berlin, run by Severin Black – present its first vinyl release: a compilation of ›durational ambience, field recordings, oversaturated improvisations and spatialised synthetic loops‹, featuring Suburban Crooked Collective, Burning Pyre, Ciaran Jacob & Flora Yin-Wong, Chantal Michelle, YL Hooi and more: A diverse cohort of familiar and new collaborators alike.
Put The Music In It's Coffin
Throughout their legendary, decade-long run, The Shadow Ring were an enigmatic force on the international musical sub-underground. Before their disbandment in 2002, this shambolic rock outfit, formed by a group of rowdy teenagers in southeast England, left behind a mighty run of eight LPs, a handful of 7"s, and a spate of raucous live shows and cryptic zine appearances on both sides of the Atlantic, all which have bolstered their enduring word-of-mouth mystique. Beginning this year with the firs…
Seismograf
*150 copies limited edition* In line with his recent body of work, Uwe Zahn bundled minimal compositions telling narratives situating in the melodic realm of ambient music. On first sight, it seems common that one can enter or construct such stories through the melodies these compositions offer. However, melodies never stand on their own – maybe only theoretically – but in fact truly reveal their magic through the sonical context they’re embedded in. To Zahn, a crucial part of his practice is al…
Odiszée Parck
*2023 stock* Radio Noisz Ensemble was the successor band to the more folk-oriented six-piece Emma Myldenberger, who released two LPs in the late 1970s, and followed those with a live cassette after the turn of the decade (all since released on CD). Three members (guitarist / mandolinist Michel Meyer, reeds player Biber Gullatz, and Topsi Tkacz on violin and contrabass) of Emma Myldenberger formed RNE in ’81, who along with percussionist Matthias Gassert and special guest Mani Neumeier (Guru Guru…
Weltschmerz
*2023 stock* Siddhartha, named after a novel by Hermann Hesse, were formed in 1973 in Korntal near Stuttgart. They performed an intelligent mix-ture of progressive and art rock influenced by psychedelia and folk. Although their 1975 album is called "Weltschmerz" all songs contain English lyrics except for "Weit weg". It was released in a limited edition of 400 copies and is now one of the most sought-after collectors’ items. A thirty minute demo tape by Siddhartha which was recorded after the re…