New Arrivals
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
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…
Burnt Offerings
The Preservation label presents Burnt Offerings, the fourth album from Brooklyn's Padna. As Padna, Nat Hawks initially made his name in the cassette underground on the revered Stunned label with two works of pop experimentalism displaying a bustling -- often boggling -- and vivid imagination. Veritable joyrides in sound and style, these releases were in line with the DIY aesthetic, primitive songcraft and eclectic sonic stew pioneered by the likes of Tall Dwarfs and forwarded by Olivia Tremo…
Stone Circle
RESTOCKED! 10/10 on Foxy Digitalis, writing "best psych album of the year! Maybe even best psych album ever?! “Stone Circle” deserves much more than a measly ten stars!”. Wood-land have released a few bits and bobs on the Install label but i'm totally unfamiliar with their work. 'Stone circle' is the duo's first full length release, limited to a super small run of 100 copies. On first listen i reckon it's total winner. Twenty tracks of brooding lo-fi instrumentation that sounds like it was recor…
Lassie House / Jumble Massive
This CD compiles two long out of print, obscure vinyls by People Like Us. Almost all (maybe all) were recorded as commisions for Dutch radio. People Like Us plunders her way through the wastelands of vinyl nobody buys, collages them into mostly strange, and at times funny pieces of music. Unlike other plunderphonics, People Like Us keep the voice/spoken word segments to a minimum, which I most hearthly welcome. Extensive spoken words are usually hilarious, but after repeated listening don't hold…
divide by zero
NEW SERIES FRAMEWORKAn extension of our CONCRETE ELECTRONICS NOISE,a brand new mix-up of unusual conceptions of sound material by young unknown composers, well known not-so-young composers and old but clever composers.Benjamin Thigpen, nomad, born in the United States, immigrated to Paris at the age of 31. He studied music, literature, philosophy and esthetics. He now composes in European studios such as GRM, EMS, Visby and STEIM, as well as in his bedroom and in the train. After six years as a …
Thousands Raised to the Sixth
2012 release ** The most recent solo incarnation of pioneer Campbell Kneale (Birchville Cat Motel, Black Boned Angel, et al.), this is the definitive OLWDTW release spanning two discs. Crowning achievement in a prolific and highly collectable catalog. Solo project of Campbell Kneale, formerly Birchville Cat Motel, and one-half of Black Boned Angel. Packaged in an oversized 5.5" square folder with two art inserts and music spanning two discs, each in an envelope.
(1975-1991)
Just arrived! The research-performance group kiva was created in 1975 by the American trombonist John Silber and the French percussionist Jean-Charles François as part of a research project at the Center for Music Experiment at the University of California San Diego. During the period of its existence (1975-91) various members (often graduate students from UCSD) joined the two permanent musicians, John Silber and Jean-Charles François, to contribute to the groups artistic production. Two persona…
Psappha; Rebonds A & B; Okho pour trois djembés
This amazing CD contains some of the great works for solo percussion by the authorities in the field of contemporary music. The performances and recording quality are both superb! Clearly all care and effort went into the recording and text however, the dual layered dvd /cd is in PAL format, and will require said player or a media transfer to see the studio footage and interview with Xenikas. Considering we spend much time searching for the "right music" to add to our collection, this disc…
Otinku
The Modern Sound Quintet were formed in Stockholm by Trinidadian steel drum master Rudy Smith. On Otinku, Smith wails out on his set of 'pans' (as I believe the vernacular goes) in an improbably slick bebop mode, accompanied by a rhythm section capable of keeping it free and swinging one moment, and then within an instant locking down a groove. While pieces like the title track and 'Bye Bye Blackbird' flow effortlessly, 'Mercy, Mercy, Mercy' and 'Memphis Underground' lay down a solid bedrock of …
Ragged And Right
This slab of gripping sound was brought about by Jack Rose's exuberant love of lowdown music. Inspired by the Mordicai Jones/Link Wray 3 Track Shack sessions, the idea for this collaboration was germinated while Rose was traveling through the heartland on a tour with D. Charles Speer & the Helix in spring 2008. Musicians used to the road are familiar with the phenomenon wherein a certain tape or recording becomes the thematic soundtrack to the tour at hand. In this case, daily doses of 'Scorpio …
Para Pacem Para Bellum
Para Pacem Para Bellum” is the first CD release with the great music of Svyatoslav Lunyov's. That serious, highly emotional and spiritual work is the result of two general methods of creating music: academic tradition (scores, acoustic instruments and playing of the real musicians) and the contemporary/experimental way (generating, synthesis, editing with computer tools). Needs to say that this electro-acoustic work combines the well-known traditional elements of the Requiem, Passions and the Ma…
Mining Our Bid'ness
A revelatory debut album by a 64 year old pianist/composer may beg the question: where has Carei Thomas been all this time? Born in a culturally diverse neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Thomas cut his musical teeth in Chicago during a particularly fertile period for that city: gigging with Sun Ra as an improvising vocalist in 1959-60, joining up with the AACM for one hot minute in 1966, co-founding a group called The L…
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 …
Water days
The book and audio CD documents an exchange of pictures, texts, sounds and voices between multimedia artist Leah Singer and Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo. WATER DAYS began as two texts each inspired by the contrast between wanderlust and the desire for home and in this volume attempts to create a filmic sequence of photographs to augment and accompany the recording. The new sound piece WATER DAYS, a radio piece for Atelier de Création Radiophonique de France Culture (ACR) is a mix of sound recording…
Resonance
When composing for a group, Ken Vandermark as a rule takes into account factors such as each musician's approach to improvisation, personal tastes and individual sound. So when he chose to compose for a tentet that included musicians who were virtually an unknown quantity to him – musicians such as Polish saxophonist/clarinetist, Mikolaj Trzaska and the Ukrainian duo, Yuriy Yaremczuk on reeds and Mark Tokar on bass – it could have been seen as a foray into relatively unknown territory. And it wa…
Snow Blind
RESTOCKED!! Limited to 300 copies only "We haven't heard from New Zealand dronescaper Peter Wright in about a year. Well, it's been at least that long since we've reviewed one of his discs. Somehow two other Wright discs slipped through the cracks in that time though, which is a shame, since pretty much everything we've heard from Wright is fantastic. This latest double disc is no different Nine looooooong tracks spread out over two discs, most in the 15-20 minute range, which is ideal for Wrigh…
Lacunae
Sound and video artist MPLD works in a world of sentiment and detachment, creating a Lost & Found aesthetic uniquely his own. Lost are the old Kodachrome slides which make up the foundation of his work. Found are the feelings of misplaced memories the slides conjure, as well as the sounds — processed and amplified — of the projectors that bring those images back to life. What’s seen on lacunae is a straight shot of the screen during a rehearsal for a concert, although that might not be clear to …
Underneath the surface
Since the very first notes, this music appears to be about memory, decay and subversion. It is a deep investigation on the ability of sounds to freely attract or reject each other, in accordance with their own nature and disposition, and still maintain their meaning. Combining dense, multilayered sheets of synthetic sounds, treated bass, electronic percussion, the six tracks reveal their non-architectural principle as the music develops through warm textural details, reverberations, underlying m…
Palace of marvels (queered pitch)
Marcus Schmickler's new release following his acclaimed Altars Of Science (EMEGO 082CD) is a must-have for those interested in the rising field of contemporary computer music. It reconfirms Schmickler's interest in the liaison of sound, phenomenology and cognitive sciences. Schmickler, therefore, utilizes a new interpretation of 1960's discovery, the Shepardtone, discovered by Roger Shepard, which creates the auditory illusion of a tone that continually rises or descends in pitch yet ultimately …