New Arrivals
Switzerland 1974
Soft Machine were one of the greatest UK avant/jazz-rock bands of all time and their work, whether their earliest performances as a psychedelic band, who were contemporaries of, and shared stages with Syd Barrett's Pink Floyd and the Jimi Hendrix Experience, all the way to being one of Europe's best known 'fusion' bands, their work continues to be name-checked by today's hip experimentalists. By mid 1973, Soft Machine had gone through a tremendous amount of personnel turnover and a shifting in t…
HD+
Universal DVD data disk, mainly for playing on computers only (there is no NTSC or PAL format or region designation for data DVDs). HD+ is a data DVD documenting the visual aesthetics of Uwe Schmidt aka Atom TM for the first time. The conceptual engagement with and the critical yet diverting examination of pop music, delivered with a twinkle in the eye, is a central topic of this musician's diverse creative work and is certainly included in this visual presentation of it. Together with the secon…
Mobilee
Exponate is a new concept series curated by Wolfgang Voigt with the intention to bring together artists from diverse experimental music backgrounds. To open up new musical spaces and to sound out the increasingly liquified confines between abstract ambient music and art music, between electronica and new music - that's the stated goal of EXPONATE. The new series starts with Berlin-based artist SCHNEIDER TM aka Dirk Dresselhaus, who is well-known for most diverse projects and collaborations acros…
Pods Of Punishment
Pods of Punishment, like parallel collection Seeds of Paradise (Idle Hands), is a journey into tube-amped molten bass and media fragments. It reveals Strategy’s strong science fiction threads and fixation on radio as a musical medium: its ghostly disembodiment, its persistent familiarity, and its spontaneous impact on the sounds around it.
"The unstoppable Paul Dickow a.k.a. Strategy shapeshifts between dub, techno and the ambient spaces between on 'Pods of Punishment' for Entr'acte. Covering al…
Doing The Splash
The Megaphone & Knock 'em Dead labels present the fifth release from improvising trio Konk Pack. Konk Pack are a two-thirds British and one-third Austrian "organic" improvisational group. Their music can be very delicate and light but when they get hot and bothered, it's like being inside of a hurricane, an earthquake and an electrical storm, all at the same time. All three members of Konk Pack have been improvising for decades with musicians like Lol Coxhill,Cecil Taylor, Tom Cora, Alan Silva, …
Note D'Autore - A tu per tu con i compositori d'oggi
Per sette anni Ricciarda Belgiojoso, dalle antenne di Radio Classica,intratteneva gli spettatori con le sue interviste ai compositori più rappresentativi della scena attuale con l'intenzione di dimostrare che "La grande musica non finisce con il '900". La musica contemporaneain effetti è generalmente considerata ostica: "Mi ero proposta per quel ruolo proprio perché, curiosa di conoscere la musica del mio tempo, avevo grande difficoltà a trovarne tracce: rarissime comparse nelle trasmissioni rad…
Program
"A collaboration between Kouhei Matsunaga (who has worked with everyone from Sensational to Autechre and Asmus Tietchens) and the less prolific Toshio Munehiro, NHK’s ultra minimalist approach to techno may conjure memories of the late 90s/early 2000s glitch and microsound scenes, but their combination of erratic beats and digital expanses feels anything but dated, sounding entirely unique and fresh in 2015. I have always had a soft spot for that short lived era that was often full of derided la…
Sleepwalkers In A Cold Circus
On Sleepwalkers in a Cold Circus Belgian sound artist Koenraad Ecker creates a biotope of musical characters that is sober, delicate, complex and vivid, with a restrained intensity, a “cold fire.” The characters discuss, hesitate, fight, pull closer, push back. Through the use of microtonality and recordings of acoustic instruments it is the elusive sound of a somnambulistic travelogue. “I’m searching for ways to create an intricate narrative, switching perspectives and voices within one form, t…
Beyond Repair
Beyond Repair is its latest solo cd. Eleven short tracks for modular synth, home made electronics and tape recorders. A true union between coarse substance of analogical devices and voltage of tense electronics. The core of Beyond Repair is the fusion of its contrasts. Permanent tension between chiselling and bare deconstruction, meditation and frontal sound, cold stasis and unstable dynamics. Eleven tracks that run without pause as a single composition that hits like a strong cut-up aggression…
Sounds Of Iceland
This recording takes you on a round trip of Iceland. The aural journey starts westward from the island’s south in the cold early spring. After a side trip into the West Fjords, our route traverses the north of the country at the height of summer, followed by an excursion into the interior highlands before a short stop in the East Fjords. As the sound trip nears its geographical starting point, autumn and winter make their appearance before the journey comes full circle.The recordings do not feat…
Double Automatism
New York City's experimental duo Talibam! team up with Fluxus artist and electronic avant-gardist Yasunao Tone and trombonist Sam Kulik for a confrontational sonic attack, fired by an array of analog synths and other electronic devices. David Novak, author of Japanoise: Music at the Edge of Circulation (2013), on Double Automatism: "Bringing together the most calamitous materials from their home planets of noise, glitch, and free improvisation, Tone and Talibam! are at once the likeliest and …
Ebb & Flow
Formed in November 2006, Dream Weapon Ritual is the duo of Simon Balestrazzi and Monica Serra. They play free-form music that draws equally from droning electronica soundscapes and imaginary folk visions.Simon Balestrazzi is an electronic/electroacoustic composer and sound artist active since the 80's. He released many albums and performed live around Europe under various names. Monica Serra is a talented actress whose artistic research led to double as vocalist since 1999. Both are member…
Five Lines
The meeting of heavyweights of electroacoustic improvisation from Europe and the Pacific United States happened during MKM trio tour in Northern America. This recording, at CalArts in 2010, yielded interesting results: a nervous displacement of noises and rich sonorous timbres. Casey Anderson, from Los Angeles, works with sound in a number of media from composition and improvisation to installations. On Five Lines he played a combination of digital and analog instruments of his own design…
It's About Time
Pioneering synthesizer soundscapes originally issued in 1974, available again. The electronic duo of Robert Margouleff and Malcolm Cecil aka Tonto released their influential debut, Zero Time, in 1971, showcasing what they described as "the world's first and largest multi-timbral polyphonic analog synthesizer." Three years later, they released this classic follow-up, recorded in Malibu. Building on their earlier achievements, it incorporates guitar, bass and drums into the unique sound of Tonto: …
Five Fizzles For Samuel Beckett
"Is there a better all-around bassist with a bow than Barry Guy? That query may scream sycophantic hyperbole, but in taking stock of the British improviser's discography it's an interrogative that can't help but manifest repeatedly.
On Guy's end the distinction of best isn't even a peripheral consideration or goal. He's placed his instrument in near-countless contexts, bringing to it a perfect sense of pitch and dynamics. Five Fizzles for Samuel Beckett is right in line with that sterling…
Erfolg
"Erfolg" is the second solo album of the exceptional musician Hans Koch, released 25 years after his first solo work ("Uluru"). "Erfolg" documents Hans Koch's experimental examination of his three instruments bass clarinet, soprano and tenor saxophone. The pieces are state of the art instant composing and sound research. Besides numerous collaborations - in the trio Koch-Schütz-Studer, with musicians like Barry Guy, Cecil Taylor, Han Bennink, Fred Frith, Urs Leimgruber and many others - Ha…
Time Machine Volume IV
Fourth Volume of the series recorded directly from the Time Machine, a magic case containing an array of home-built oscillators activated by Renato Rinaldi to create pulsing rhythms and noise patterns using the mixer feedback. Edited and mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi.
"The Time Machine project was conceived in order to find a simple and immediate way to work with rhythm. I built two cheap and imprecise, almost-square wave oscillators with a wide range of frequencies. These oscillators can …
Blood/Lines
Blood Lines is Emily Jane White's first album for Important since 2009's Dark Undercoat. Featuring vocal contributions from Marissa Nadler. This American version of the CD contains two bonus tracks not available elsewhere.
After releasing three albums in three years, Emily Jane White wrote over 100 sketches between January 2011 and October 2012. Her new album "Blood / Lines" is a selected compilation of these songs. Recorded in a secluded studio in Sonoma County, California, the quiet envi…
I Line My Days Along Your Weight
Brooklyn duo Mark Rogers and Mary Byrne recorded their debut, I Line My Days Along Your Weight, as a true duet: facing each other inches apart, intent upon listening. They wove together archaic instruments -- baritone acoustic, tricone resonator, golden-era flattop, space-age lap steel, upright piano, and hundred-year-old mandolin -- into a new and vibrant third voice. All the songs were recorded live to two-inch analog tape, the studio equivalent of tightrope-walking without a net. Mar…
Heat Source
Ashley Paul's Heat Source was recorded during a challenging year of transience between New York and London. During this year of impermanence Paul performed regularly and the effects of frequent performance and traveling can be heard in the intentionally pared back emptiness of Heat Source. making it an emotionally challenging and fascinatingly personal listening experience.Heat Source finds Ashley Paul working using her brilliant ears to find a zen like balance between her voice and a sp…