New Arrivals
Serpico
Sidney Lumet's masterpiece Serpico released in 1973 is one of the most iconic movies of the '70s. Featuring a career-defining performance by Al Pacino in the title role, it's a superb neo noir encapsulating the post-Watergate mood of the early '70s. The film's soundtrack by Mikis Theodorakis is equally stunning. Composed by Greek musician and arranged by cult jazz pianist Bob James, it is a superb blend of funky instrumental and traditional melodies reminiscent of The Godfather OST. The soundtra…
The Age Of Space
* Edition of 200 * Joel Gilardini is an experimental guitarist and sound designer, based in Zurich (Switzerland). His solo ambient oriented works are often based on the use of live‐looping and instant composition techniques. It’s a very unique biosphere of ambient, drone, dub, doom elements and morphing soundscapes. Joel Gilardini opens at Montags for Nik Bärtsch’s Ronin/Mobile on regular basis at Exil club (Zurich/CH), and has taken part to Y2K International Live-Looping festivals in Zurich, Pa…
Magari
* Edition of 300 * Master synthesists Colin Potter (NWW), Alessio Natalizia (Not Waving), and Guido Zen reprise their supergroup for Ecstatic with a seductively serpentine follow-up to their superb debut from a couple of years ago.
PNZ’s pulsing, twanging, expansive ‘Magari’ was recorded between 2018-2020 in the slipstream of ’Shut Your Eyes On The Way Out’, which is surely one of the strongest new kosmiche-related albums of recent years. Where that album refreshed classic styles of European syn…
Muster Point
US sax player Stanley J. Zappa and Finnish drummer Simo Laihonen come together on the new album "Muster Point" on We Jazz Records, August 7. The two students of Milford Graves add bassist Ville Rauhala on a couple of tracks to make a bold and adventurous album captured both live and in the studio while Zappa was touring in Finland with the Black Motor musicians. This is a set full of fire and thunder, but also features some more meditative spiritual jazz. RIYL: Milford Graves, ESP-Disk', spiritu…
I'll Remember
LP version. Tip-on sleeve. For every celebrated name in jazz, soul and related music, there are probably another 1000 musicians who had all the talent and potential but for whom widespread recognition remained elusive. Roscoe Weathers is one such figure, a jazzman who earned his chops the hard way, a sideman in smoky clubs from Memphis to Seattle, before finally settling in LA. He recorded a significant amount of music through the 1960s, but never found the slightest modicum of commercial acclai…
Overgrowth
* Edition of 200 * Overgrowth: We consider technology as a tool at our disposal, while it has become the environment around us and takes only care of efficiency.
So, nowadays, the technical apparatus became more important than men and their needs.
It has no purpose, or a vision for a better mankind future. It only "works".
Summing
Oscar Jan Hoogland is the sound of Amsterdam in person. He plays in the Muziekgebouw (Amsterdams main hall for modern composed music) as well as in the Bimhuis (Holland’s main jazz venue) that is literally attached to it, as in its parking garage. He is an instant composer, pianist and inventor of his own instrument by putting a clavichord, a keyboard instrument from the 17th century, on 220 Volt electricity.
As the last student of the late pianist, composer and improvisor Misha Mengelberg he te…
Yes Yes No No Yes No Yes
Officer! was founded by Londoner Mick Hobbs. His roots were in the Rock In Opposition scene of the late 70s and early 80s. Initially he worked as guitarist in The Work, subsequently he became closely associated with This Heat and their Cold Storage Studio in Brixton, working with artists like FamilyFodder, Catherine Jauniaux or Zeena Parkins.
The band's first album "8 New Songs By Mick Hobbs" came out in 1982 on casette only. It was followed by the second album, "Ossification". The third album, …
S.O.T.A.
*Limited edition of 100 hand-numbered copies, issued in a digipack.* Non Toxique Lost are one of the most important and equally most underrated bands from Berlin's 1980s Industrlal scene. Sprung aus den Wolken, Einstürzende Neubauten, Die Tödliche Doris and also Non Toxique Lost were the core of the movement in the divided city. In the old days, most of their albums came out on cassette only, later they were collected onto vinyls and CDs.
After the tragic loss of long-time member Steffen Schütze…
Khamu (She Sleep Walks)
Second installment in a reissue programme for this excellent UK band. C Cat Trance were formed by multi instrumentalist John Rees Lewis after his departure from Medium Medium, taking the band's drummer Nigel Kingston Stone with him. The band are seen as members of the post-punk movement, but that's not all that is to say about their sound.
C Cat Trance incorporated ethnic music into their compositions before world music became a popular genre. Their influences come mainly from Northern Africa an…
Crossfade Estate
Crossfade Estate was a special, distinct project. It was made in November 2005. Recorded in 10 hours. Edited, mixed and collaged over 18 months. It was a development of Charles Hayward's long term relationship with The Albany in Deptford, London. They asked him to push their recently installed digital recording suite and see what he could make. The approach was a step further from the series Accidents+Emergencies which Hayward had curated in the late 1990's.
It was a pulling together of differen…
Antiphonen
Sainkho Namtchylak is a singer originally from Tuva, an autonomous republic in the Russian Federation just north of Mongolia. She is known for her Tuvan throat singing or Khöömei. Her music encompasses avant-jazz, electronica, modern composition and Tuvan influences. Once the Soviet Union had collapsed, she moved to Vienna, making it her base, although she traveled widely, working in any number of shifting groups and recording a number of discs that revolved around free improvisation. Amongst th…
Nothing but the Music
The sounds of late '70s and '80s east coast avant-garde jazz, soul, and punk rock are well documented, but in Nothing but the Music Thulani Davis gives us something beyond, delivering a collection of synesthetic, transportive documentary poems that breathe anecdotal and impressionistic life into a sonic-social history about which most can only speculate. Davis' verse takes free flight with its muses, scatting and leaping off the page and the shoulders of the musicians, nightclubs, and choreograp…
1975
**Edition of 200** Over the many years we've known each other, Joe Carducci had several times mentioned his brother Mark had a cool band back in the pre-punk '70s. Then a couple of years ago, he added that tapes of this project were around, and asked if might we be interested in hearing them. Midknight 1975 is the result. Two different line-ups of the band are documented here -- a quintet studio session recorded on location at the Hippie House, and a live one with a different drummer and one les…
Holy Origin
Vestals is the avatar of Los Angeles based artist Lisa McGee, whose debut album Forever Falling Toward the Sky was released by Root Strata in 2012. She has also discreetly operated in U.S. underground music for the last decade as a member of the dream-drone duo Higuma with Evan Caminiti, while making vocal contributions to acclaimed albums by Jefre Cantu Ledesma and Sarah Davachi. McGee is the sole producer and performer on her sophomore effort, Holy Origin. Since her last offering she has evol…
Metal River
New album by another favourite artist here at FD, whose work can traverse everywhere from avant-folk or otherworldly pop to minimalist electronics or some of the most fervent 'outer sounds' one can dredge from the deepest crevices of their doubtlessly life battle-scarred imagination. On Metal River, Richard Youngs offers four songs of deep space beamed curdled electronics not far removed from being akin to the contorted death caterwauls of a cyborg species reaching out in uttermost anguish. It's…
Milzz Expz
NYZ on the recording: "The Buchla 100 experimental session begins with a documentary recording of the noise generators. Something I find endlessly fascinating is listening to different noise sources, so I always feel compelled to record them. The remaining tracks are sequenced by my MANIAC Cellular Automata sequencer. First up are three little sequenced ditties that also incorporate the ARP 2600 modular interconnected to the Buchla 100. After this is an ultra-minimal setup using MANIAC and the m…
Mi specchio e rifletto
Tip - this is stunning! Since their launch in mid-2000s, the New York based imprint, Unseen Worlds, has continued to set an incredibly high bar through the earth-shaking quality of their releases. As dedicated to historical artists and works as they are to those emerging in the present, they’ve always taken their time, slipping things into the world with remarkable care, that leave humble tectonic shifts in their wake. After an absolutely incredible couple of years with brilliant albums from Lau…
Breaking the Elephant’s Legs
Marc Behrens presents six extended surrealist songs ranging from psycho rock to dismantled R&B, crossing into doom jazz and spoken word. Animal field recordings; electronic boom and buzz; synths; detuned sitar; violins played by Portuguese master musician Carlos Zingaro. None of this is in any way what you would expect.
Horror Vacui
**Edition of 250** Music nowadays is a crime. The whole dark art consisting in whether the composer opts for death by suffocation (maximalism) or death by strangulation (the perennially fashionable anti-fashion that is minimalism). Jon Doe One’s debut record, Small Numbers, involved layer after layer of obsessive construction. Faced with its delirious palimpsest of rhythm and sound, listeners — those curious lost souls, I count myself amongst their ranks, alas — had no choice but to gag on the e…