New Arrivals
El Pianista del Antifaz
French-Catalan musician Pascal Comelade's world is atypical and his inspirations come from many different sources -- from contemporary music to The Cramps -- making him one of the most creative and original artists of our times. At the crossroads of many different arts, never where he's expected, he never ceases to surprise his audience, taking the listener on poetic paths of primitive perception. El Pianista del Antifaz is the latest album in Comelade's galaxy. The artwork was designed by Du…
Kilo
Finnish experimental electronic musician Mika Vainio's first solo album for Blast First sees him return to his classic power electronics/heavy beats approach that made Pan Sonic garner a worldwide reputation. The album developed from Vainio's recent live sets to make 10 tersely-titled tracks inspired by the shipping container industry. Four stars in Mojo: "heavy-freight," The Quietus describes it as "fearsome."
Temple
'Temple' is the final installment in Jan Jelinek's series of four vinyl compilations that bring together the wide variety of his music: commissioned works, live recordings, collaborations with other musicians as well as unreleased material from the last five years. Temple stems from a collaboration with French-Canadian choreographer Sylvain Émard. Temple is a re-worked excerpt of the music for the dance piece Fragments – Volume I and is a 10 minute drone work that builds from nothing more than a…
S/t
Attila Faravelli and Nicola Martini are two of the most innovative italian artists working in the field between sound art, electro-acoustic music and raw resonanting materials.
This recordings, edited by Giuseppe Ielasi, are the result of a couple of years of real experiments with a crazy amount of different materials, stones, chemical acids, vibrating obojects, modified electronic devices and acoustic spaces.
Tomorrow, Tomorrow and Tomorrow
35 years have passed since Bill’s last new slab of vinyl was released. We bring you this set of gems from ‘78–’81. It’s bursting with a couple new tracks (with a few traded out from the ‘05 CD), a new sequence, new art, and expanded liner notes by the man himself.
Forms
Forms represents Pausal's sophomore production for Barge Recordings and sees the British duo merging their finely detailed sound design and ambience with a newly heightened sense of space and structure. Simon Bainton and Alex Smalley have clearly developed their compositional abilities since their earlier output; the ten pieces here are presented as four long tracks and feel natural in their melding of experimentation and harmonic progression. The rich, sprawling waves of aural grandeur a…
Mad Dog\'s Hustle
A too long unheard blacksploitation soundtrack from the Fantasy Productions house -- grooves from the pool of players who laid down the sounds on Secret Stash's fantastic Porno Groove compilation -- the score for the very little seen and long lost Mad Dog's Hustle from 1974! The music is credited to The Upstroke -- the same unidentified musicians from Fantasy's adult film scores -- and in a similar fashion to the porno soundtrack material, they're working very much in the appropriate idiom, but …
Orchestre Sidi Yassa De Kayes
After the 1960 independence, the Orchestre Regional de Kayes was founded in order to reinvigorate the local cultures from the Mand and the Kasso regions and turn some traditional themes into modern songs. Under the guidance of bandleader Harouna Barry, they evolve as one of Mali's finest orchestras. In the early 1970s, like most modern bands of Mali, the orchestra evolved into the Sidi Yassa de Kayes, named after Sidi Yassa, a late great singer. In 1977, they release one eponymous LP in 1977 on …
Enharmonic intervals (For Paschen organ)
Forget what you know about the Seattle-area sound-art project Mamiffer and the Finnish hypno-rock institution Circle. Enharmonic Intervals (for Paschen Organ), the first in a proposed series of joint efforts involving these parties, contains few of the musical hallmarks you might associate with either performer. The comforts of austere piano sketches and solemn nocturnes are largely absent; the wallop of repetitive rhythms and metallic kitsch is nowhere to be found. It’s as if an unseen h…
Otherworldy
Founded 40 years ago in 1972 “Otherworldlyâ€Â is the first Pyramids’ album in over 35 years. They released three albums before splitting up in 1977 – albums that made them one of the most mysterious and legendary of all the spiritual cosmic jazz collectives of the early 70s. Reunion? Re-Incarnation!!!
 The new album contains 14 never before released tracks. The Pyramids’ signature sound is still percussion driven, no surprise with Nash and Speller being two of the mo…
Fur Paul Klee
For Sven-Ake Johansson, the capricious and mercurial character of Paul Klee's texts is not a flaw, but a quality in its own right. His thirteen settings capture precisely this quality of the texts. Johansson's clear diction, his distinct, almost exaggerated elocution, imbues Klee s texts with a lapidary air without stripping them of their personal and intimate nature.
Piano solo
Recorded live at Cafe OTO in March 2009 during Otomo Yoshihide's first residency here. This was one of only a handful of solo piano performances Otomo has given where he uses the instrument as a control matrix for harmonically rich feedback tones and devastating clusters of complex noise. Beautifully rendered with maximum dynamic range by Lupo's 45rpm cut!
The Plain Where The Palace Stood
Drag City drops the sixth and latest David Grubbs pop album, The Plain Where the Palace Stood, which finds David once again twining together the diverse strands of his vast interests. Working with Andrea Belfi (drums, electronics) and Stefano Pilia (guitar) - plus Attila Faravelli on electronics - creates a sympathetic groupthink that David expects more and greater from in the years to come. The welcome return of his distinctive overdriven guitar tone is a highlight of the record. And C. S…
Elegy For Rusted Souls
After their last release from 1982, the seminal "California Babylon", San Francisco industrial pioneers Factrix are back with a new studio album, recorded together with Italian duo Control Unit (whose critically acclaimed debut "The Fugitives" was released on Backwards last year). The quartet formed by Bond Bergland, Cole Palme, Silvia Kastel and Ninni Morgia moulds a new language of industrial music with guitars, bass and electronics, resulting in a fusion of acoustic and electric elements, pri…
Convulsive Threshold
Two heavyweight explorers of sound and technology, Russell Haswell and Yasunao Tone, both undertaking separate rigorous experiments into the synthesis of sound and all its remits, converge for one helluva collaborative work. ‘Convulsive Threshold’ is the result of years of research and experimentation, Haswell’s systems of hybrid analogue/digital audio generation acting as one of the starting points for this relentess piece of material, which are then subjected to Tone’s MP3 Deviation tec…
Studies for stradbroke
Letterpress sleeve, 2 color. Designed and printed by Ben Owen. Cover image from a photograph by Lawrence English. Hydrophonic recordings made january and august 2007, Stradbroke Island, Queensland.
Hai kein Wal
Meeting between visual artist Beni Bischof and electronic musician Norbert Möslang. Limited to 200 copies and hand signed by artists. With this somewhat confused, absurd or primitive Bishop chant, the result could be to remembered as a crashing jumbo jet
Mantle
Mantle is Pixel's fourth release on Raster-Noton since his debut in 2003 and a further exploration of his approach to rhythm-driven electronic music. The overall atmosphere which is produced by the fragile but nevertheless complex sounds is gloomy and quite threatening. Deep, pulsating basses are accompanied by ominous and fierce tones which emerge like flashes of light or shock waves, giving the impression of being warning signals. The few calm moments are constantly disrupted by dark dr…
No Answer : Lower Floors
CD version. "No Answer : Lower Floors is the record of 2013 you need to be most worried about. No Answer : Lower Floors is further flesh to the shadowy silhouette cast by this Michigan art abstraction unit, perenially poised on the cusp of a precipice. Wolf Eyes will carry on forever but always remain mysteriously unfinished. The No Answer : Lower Floors material covers all bases: tough to toughest to tangled, all done in the Wolves' least convoluted smooth style. The vocals, delays, primit…
Along the way
Former Emeralds member Mark McGuire has planned a new album following his 2011 albumGet Lost. Along the Waythrough Dead Oceans. On Along The Way, McGuire writes in the liner notes, “This story is an odyssey through the vast, unknown regions of the mind…the endless unfolding of psychological landscapes, leading to perpetual discoveries and expansions, in a genuinely emergent and infinite world of worlds.” Further he writes “[the new album] is not a critique, it is not instructional, nor is it a p…