New Arrivals
Empty orchestras
Peter Orins project could be called an accompanied solo. The drummer has designed an electronic device autonomous enough to influence him in his play in an almost unpredictable way. Therefore a kind of dialogue is established between the musician and the electronics where the usual roles are reversed: the drummer offers an insistent and repetitive form, transformations and random treatments performed live cause the disorder conducive to improvisation. Magnified timbres or on the contrary disturb…
Object subject to change
Object Subject To Change' is Henrik Rylander's fourth album for iDEAL but the first since 2009. Rylander is king of hypnotizing, focused feedback drone with razorsharp noise and monotonous pulse. Music that feels as comfortable in academic worlds as in filthy basements. Henrik Rylander was the drummer of the provocative, sweaty and chaotic garage rock band Union Carbide Productions (1987-1993). After a few years focusing on his visual art (photography) he started experimenting in sound and espec…
We Thought We Could Change the World. Conversations With Gérard Rouy
One day in 2008 an old friend of mine came to me and said, 'I want to make a film about Peter Brötzmann, do you want to be part of it?' What a question! He didn't know that much about (free) jazz and freely improvised music but from the late 70s on, he had been very much attracted - as we all were - by the graphic work of most of the Free Music Production records, a lot of them being worked out by Brötzmann. He also knew that I had been one of Brötzmann's great fans and I had been acquainted to …
Kartacz
If I were to look at the ideas promoted by the Experimental Studio against Ma e Instrumenty's practices, I would refer to the concept of music which is - for certain reasons - 'impossible' studio electronic productions, preparing instruments, using and editing tapes - all those practices once broadened the perspectives of the art of sound. However, the 'unreachable' sound combinations produced by Ma e Instrumenty could also be considered as an attempt to overcome the 'impossibility' in music. Ho…
Polygamy
In all respects, Andrzej Biezan (1945-83) was an original and creative composer. His main means of expression were intuitive creation based on general assumptions and well balanced improvisation respecting proportions typical of traditional narrative. According to Biezan's approach, music that is written down is 'music about music'. True creation is only possible in the present moment - neither in the past nor in the future. It is an activity performed in real time. Any reference to the r…
Songbook 5
In May 2013, Disembraining invited Mattin to Australia to conceive a series of works addressing the question What is not music? The question refers respectfully to the long-running Australian experimental festival What is Music? reframing it as negation in order to investigate -What sounds remain impossible to assimilate? What isn't music ? Mattin responded by creating the 5th edition of his songbook series: an ongoing work that uses 'improvisation as a way or exposing structural clichés in pop-…
Becs
CD edition: the last time Fennesz released an album on Austrian label Mego it was 2001 and the name of that release was 'Endless summer'. Now, in 2014 Editions Mego is extremely proud to release the conceptual follow up that landmark of abstract pop. Bécs (pronounced 'baeetch') is Hungarian for Vienna and is the first full length Fennesz solo release since 2008's 'Black Sea'. Eschewing the more drone orientated works of 'Black Sea', 'Bécs' returns to the more florid pop mechanisms as dep…
Figueroa Terrace
**Singular 35 minute piece of analog modular composition** "Thomas Ankersmit is a musician and installation artist based in Berlin. Since 2006 his main instrument, both live and in the studio, has been the Serge analogue modular synthesizer. Acoustic phenomena such as sound reflections, infrasonic vibration, otoacoustic emissions, and highly directional projections of sound have been an important part of his work since the early 2000's. In the winter of 2011-2012 Ankersmit was invited by …
Holocaust
Ultralimited, comes as transparent red vinyl. Re-issue of industrial music's 'holy grail', released back in 1984 on Eskimo Records. Not much is known about this obscure Japanese band, White Hospital are a duo, Jun Konagaya of Grim and Tomo Kuwahara of Vasilisk. In the early 80s Jun formed White Hospital together with Tomasada Kuwahara. They released one album called “Holocaust” in 1984 and a 7″ “We Wish You Are Merry X’mas”. Kuwuhara moved on to Vasilisk, while Jun released a number of solo r…
Mkwaju
Re-issue of Japanese tribal/industrial pioneers, released back in 1988 on Eskimo Records. Originally recorded and mixed in Tokyo from December '87 to May '88, now remastered with additional bonus track. Comes as transparent blue vinyl.
Whirling Dervishes
Re-issue of Japanese tribal/industrial pioneers, released back in 1987 on Eskimo Records. Originally recorded and mixed in Tokyo from December '86 to March '87 now remastered with additional bonus track. Comes as transparent purple vinyl.
No New Age
Kapital is an encounter of two artists that usually penetrate different musical genres and ideas. It is an encounter of two musical worlds: psychoactive electro-acoustic music generated with electronic instruments and found objects and extreme psychedelia based on the sounds of processed guitar. Zio?ek and Iwan'ski worked together for the first time during recording sessions of improvisational group Innercity Ensemble formed in 2011. In August of 2013 they recorded in Bory Tucholskie their debut…
Le Triedre fertile
2014 repress. Recollection GRM is one more label within the Editions Mego family of labels. Its aim is to make available on vinyl the vast archives of Groupe De Recherches Musicales (GRM). Being released in batches of two every three months, it will present both known and lesser-known works. All releases will be re-cut at Dubplates & Mastering and packaged in new artwork by Stephen O'Malley, featuring bi-lingual (French/English) texts. Some of these pioneering works have been out-of-print …
Music for stocking top, swing and staircase
'Music for Stocking Top, Swing and Staircase' is a spellbinding archival discovery documenting a performance by one of the missing links in experimental electronic and prototypical industrial music. John Lacey is one of the background players in British electronic music and conceptual performance art. He was an early collaborator with Chris Carter and Cosey Fanni Tutti and a crucial member of COUM Transmissions alongside Throbbing Gristle's Genesis P-Orridge. Lacey contributed technical directio…
Return from the centre of Earth
Recording during concerts in Chicago by Mikolaj Trzaska - saxophones, bass clarinet; Steve Swell - trombone; Per-Åke Holmlander - tuba; Tim Daisy - drums
Why is there something instead of nothing
This, Majkowski's third solo double bass release, is an album comprising of two pieces, which in their own way explore the relationship between stillness and momentum. The spectrum and resonance of particular sustained frequencies, and the atmosphere which they create is also at the core of this work. Majkowski captures these aspects via specific and highly detailed playing approaches, sustained over extended periods of time. We hear an inner pulse in slow melodies, and floating, almost frozen, …
Sin Gas
Wire Magazine's official King of All Skronk Mats Gustafsson is back with his partner in time Paal Nilssen-Love for a new duo record this week. I'm rather struck by the creepy skeleton on the front cover, and I'm also gleaning enjoyment from the textural bubble'n'squeak madness on the disc. There are quite a few droney periods on this one, with Gustafsson eking soft moans and primal howls and jagged rasps from his saxophone, with the drums often puttering around amorphously, but there are also mo…
Oslo Tapes
Mats Gustafsson, aka King Skronk, aka Skronkmeister General, aka The Skronk Controller, aka Squeaky Pete, aka Skronkmaster Flash, joins forces with another experimental giant Lasse Marhaug (aka The Ear Destroyer, aka Mr Skreee, aka Electro Crunch Bastard, aka Testicle Hazard) on this sanity-obliterating collaboration. Squeaky reeds go head to head against fluttering, hissing, rotting reels in a shrill, broken, fluttering noise experiment. It sounds horrible, of course, and if you're looking at t…
Stones & 20 Action and Destruction Films
Stones & 20 Action and Destruction Films 1965-1979. “If I had to name a single Austrian filmmaker who to this day has not received the international recognition deserved for the artistic level his work attained, I would unhesitatingly name him. When he died in 1988 at the early age of 50, Ernst Schmidt Jr. left behind a body of work that could hardly be more multifaceted, including experimental documentary films, material films, expanded cinema, abstract films, project films, conceptual films, …
Untitled
Atsushi Reizen, living in Japan, uses electric-guitar-based sound sources with drone, noise and minimalist techniques. In 2007 he formed the ambient quartet Nerae, but he has now left the group to focus on his solo music. This LP features two newly recorded tracks based on the concept of 'differing speeds', and a track recorded live at Fylkingen in Stockholm.