New Arrivals
Six Moving Guitars
Sofa is very proud to release the outstanding debut record of composer / guitarist Fredrik Rasten. In Six Moving Guitars, the stable sounds of justly tuned consonances are being «activated» by the different qualities of the movements of the guitars. The piece came out of the collaborative work between three dancers and three musicians. The group’s goal was to work with choreography and sound as a unity, erasing the functional differences between dancer and musician and focusing solely on the son…
Off the Coast
Henrik Munkeby Nørstebø and Daniel Lercher met in the Czech country side in 2010, as part of an improvising orchestra comprised of Austrian, Czech and Norwegian musicians, and started working as a duo shortly after. Finding common ground in fine grained and slow pulsed music, the duo went through a research period, striving to develop a common material void of all things unnecessary, where the impact of acoustic and electronic sound elements were truly balanced. While Nørstebø refined his arsena…
Left Behind
**100 copies** John Macedo is a sound artist and performer from London. He has incorporated everything from acoustic instruments and environmental sound to analogue and computer synthesis into recorded works, live performances, film, and sound installations. He has a pluralistic approach which explores and reveals the hidden potential in all sounds, environments and technologies, often in intimate, immersive and intuitive ways. He has performed around the UK and Europe and has collaborated live …
GCT
**100 copies** Marie e le Rose is a sound artist, music / art therapist, sound researcher and multi-instrumentalist based in Florence, Italy. She has releases on labels such as Forrest Hill Records, No Problema Tapes, Time Released Sound, Laverna, Zamzam Records, Further Records, Chemical Tapes, Phinery, Hylé Tapes and more, with many monikers for her varying concepts (Marie e le Rose, Moon RA, MonoLogue). She has performed at festivals and venues such as Festival Sons Libérés (Bruxelles), Festi…
Trace
Cassette-only release. Edition of 250 copies. John Butcher's work ranges through improvisation, his own compositions, multi-tracked saxophone pieces and explorations with feedback and extreme acoustics. Originally a physicist, he left academia in 1982, and has since collaborated with hundreds of musicians. He is well known as a soloist, recently exploring unusual site-specific acoustics, and has released seven albums of solo saxophone music. His tape for The Tapeworm features two contrasting per…
Mesmer
Cassette-only release. Edition of 250 copies. Mesmer was Peter Rehberg's first-ever solo composition, originally released in 1995 as part of Mesmervariations, a (long-deleted) 2CD by Ash International presented in an oversized plastic wallet with eight card inserts. That release contained various original compositions influenced by the work of Friedrich Mesmer, and included pieces by Ryoji Ikeda, Gescom, Edvard Graham Lewis, Robert Hampson, Bruce Gilbert, CM Von Hausswolff and Drome (Bernd Fried…
Raw Fall
Fans of Daniel Menche, or for that matter the Editions Mego label in general, will no doubt already be aware of the Portland artist's interest in the ferocious sounds made by waterfalls. Last year's 'Katarakt' was constructed from a number of waterfall field recordings made around the pacific Northwest of the USA, and while the end product featured some heavy-duty processing, this new Tapeworm edition gives us an insight into the unconditioned sonic profile of these natural forces. Each side s…
Memphistophelis
Another inspired selection from the Tapeworm label, this time making use of some longstanding connections to Terre Thaemlitz aka DJ Sprinkles* Chugga are an immediately interesting proposition: two air conditioner repair school flunkies with a crazy homemade subbass device and a thing for slack, heat-hazed deep south funk and disco with a dub pressure. The pair of Lester Fuero and Jeff Haines hail from Memphis and made this sly tribute to their city 'Memphistophelis' in 1996, gleaning eleven tra…
Johnny remember me
Further proof that anything goes when it comes to the Tapeworm series, this latest installment is a short story penned by novellist, crime/noir fiction writer and critic Cathi Unsworth, read by the author herself (on the A-side) and by her musical collaborator Pete Woodhead (on the B-side). Set in 1950s Soho, the tale concerns itself with London's burgeoning rock & roll scene, the seedier, underworld elements of the city and Joe Meek. … Limited to 250 copies. (Boomkat)
Black spirituals
New from the ever-essential Tapeworm series, this release is by Californian sound artist Zachary James Watkins, whose CV reveals a seasoned background in composition that boasts multiple degrees, awards and commissions. Black Spirituals was recorded last year, arising from Watkins' "intense dialogue" with fellow artist Morgan Craft - comparatively little else is revealed in terms of the genesis of these four pieces, although Watkins cites the use of a dusty tape recording of a late 1970s lecture…
Analog Apparitions
Heavyweight harmonic drones from the always surprising Tapeworm imprint. Brooklyn-based composer, Randy Gibson, was a student of famed minimalist La Monte Young and his two compositions here are firmly rooted in the studied traditions of his tutor. Given the quite specific titles of 'The First Analog Pillar with its Simplest Primes and The Harbinger of The Second Pillar with The Low Modora Cornerstone and The Outlying Primal Cirrus from Apparitions of The Four Pillars', and 'The Third Analog Pil…
Piano work'd
Philip Corner (b. 1933) is an American composer, musician and visual artist. His teachers include Henry Cowell and Olivier Messiaen. While on military duty in Korea in 1960-1961, he studied calligraphy with Ki-sung Kim and many of his works have calligraphic scores. A founding member of Fluxus, Corner has performed with George Maciunas, Dick Higgins, Yoko Ono and Nam June Paik. From 1967 to 1970 he taught the course in Experimental Composition at the New School for Social Research, which John Ca…
15:24-15:46
Old Apparatus are a four-piece audio/visual collective transmitting from East London that have been releasing bass-oriented electronic dance music on Mala's underground label Deep Medi Musik. This edition for The Tapeworm is an improvised instrumental piece using guitar, piano, violin and found sound ambiences recorded entirely in the front room of the house they share together. Given that most forms of electronic music are bound by linearity and grid-based digital audio workstations, Old Appara…
Live flux
Limited edition of 150 copies. Recorded live in London (analogue modular synthesiser, computer, radio). Illustration Allon Kaye. 'Phil Julian has been an active part of the experimental music underground since the late 1990's recording numerous works under the name Cheapmachines and under his own name since 2008 in various collaborative and solo performances. Studio recordings and live performances within Europe and North America have focused on the use of analogue electronics (particularly unst…
Glockenbachwerkstatt
Infinite Livez (born 1972 in Bethnal Green, East London) is an MC and musician who studied at Chelsea Art College. His wide range of influences comes from such diverse sources as P-Funk, Surrealism and continental philosophy. His first album Bush Meat was released on Big Dada Records in 2004 to immediate critical acclaim in the UK and abroad. 2007 saw the release of his second album Art Brut fe de Yoot, also on Big Dada, and a collaborative project with the Swiss electro-jazz outfit, Stade. Reco…
Fleshpile thematic
It should probably come as little surprise that Dale was partly responsible for compiling the brilliant '&c.' album by Leslie Winer, with whom he shares a similarly soporific style of articulation and minimalism, albeit perhaps from a more contemporary and even more stripped down, obtuse perspective. Very intriguing stuff, we're sure you'll be returning to this one later down the line.
Ripped and Torn: The Loudest Punk Fanzine in the UK
Ripped & Torn: The UK’s Loudest Punk Fanzine is an anthology of one of the first punk zines. Tony Drayton began producing Ripped & Torn in Glasgow in 1976 and carried it into the next wave of punk, continuing long after others like Sniffing Glue had stopped. All of his seventeen issues are reproduced in this bound volume. By punks and for punks, Ripped & Torn: The UK’s Loudest Punk Fanzine is a fascinating document of the punk subculture and a sacred text of DIY culture. “The mystery was: who …
Desert Drone Cycle
**125 copies** Cristopher Cichocki is an interdisciplinary artist from the Coachella Valley, with an extensive body of work that examines transmorphic cycles of decay and renewal. His multi-faceted practice addresses environmental and socio-political disintegration above and beneath the surface of everyday perception. Cichocki is as accomplished in maximalist, immersive composition as he is with painting, sculpture, photography, video, installation and Land art interventions. Desert Drone Cycle …
Osharaku
Osharaku is a traditional Japanese form of musical entertainment, featuring mainly voice, shamisen and percussion, with a repertoire of folk and popular songs, performed by farmers and fishermen for local audiences. This compilation, compiled by Riyo Mountains, is the fourth release in the EM Records / Riyo Mountains Japanese folk series. These recordings feature legendary Osharaku masters, recorded in their homes, brilliantly capturing the casual warmth and vitality characteristic of the style.…
Neptunalia
**300 copies** Neptunalia, a festival of Neptune, celebrated at Rome, of which very little is known. The day on which it was held, was probably the 23rd of July. The festival was celebrated with games. In respect to the ceremonies of this festival nothing is known, except that the people used to build huts of branches and foliage, in which they probably feasted, drank, and amused themselves. Includes tracks by David Edren, H. Takahashi, Nuslux, Olli Aarni, Ilpo Numminen, Nonlocal Society, Kuupuu…