New Arrivals
Ecotono
“The word Ecotono is built from two roots. Eco (oikos/casa) and tono (tonos/ tensión). An ecotono, or ecotone, is a habitat created by the juxtaposition of distinctly different habitats; an edge habitat; or an ecological zone or boundary where two or more ecosystems meet. It is a transition area between two distinct habitats, where the ranges of the organisms in each bordering habitat overlap, and where there are organisms unique to the transition area. An ecotone region provides conditions of b…
History Of The Units - The Early Years: 1977-1983
first ever legit reissue of THE UNITS. This genre-defying band, from San Francisco's barely-documented synth/punk/art underground of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, combined sarcastic humor with deadly serious cultural critique, and synthetic experimentation with the bombast of punk. Includes the most sought-after early singles and selections from their first LP, Digital Stimulation, along with unreleased demos, and more. Remastered audio. Packaged in gatefold LP style sleeves with 32-page booklet…
From here to there
The Preservation label presents From Here To There, the debut album from San Francisco’s Ben Swire. While From Here To There can sit snugly in the canon of electronica, it’s played out with expansive vision and immediate warmth. Woven together with a deft sense of minimalism and melody using double bass, interlocking guitars and crisp percussion, the use of live instrumentation against densely layered field recordings finds great balance between elasticity and deep ambient underpinnings. The acc…
Gaycre (2)
Xavier Charles : clarinet, Michel Doneda : saxophone, Jean Pallandre : microphones. Following the first meeting in 1997, they went back to the same places to record again an incredible meeting of soundscape !
Somnambulance to Dream General
"Somnambulance" is a reworking of an album of odd and obscure tracks that was released in a microscopic edition on CD-R before. For this CD, Mr. Liles has provided his funniest and possibly most controversial artwork as of yet. You get an hour of music of many different styles: Andrew Liles' trademark of eerie and spooky sounds is there; also electronics and a whole range of instruments are placed in between sketches and longer tracks. And if all this weren't enough, you get three bonus tracks t…
Otter Songs
Otter Songs is the culmination of the process that began in 2008 by Lingua Fungi and Alio Die. The idea for the collaboration was born from the initial recordings by Jaakko Padatsu utilizing diverse self made instruments and natural objects including driftwood, snail shells and otter skull ocarinas. The archaic and arctic drones were later complemented with subtle recordings by Stefano Musso with zither, sitar and other acoustic instruments. The collaboration was sealed with final recordings i…
Bruder Luzifer
23 Track CD Anthology. For three decades Hamburg's Felix Kubin operated as an undercover Sci-Fi pop visionary. Lurching from seasick electronics to dramatic outsider songcraft, the highlights of Kubin's engaging teenage experiments (Krematorien) and later pop masterworks (Lightning Strikes) mingle here with electrified spaghetti-western romps (Sabàta) and terminal noise-spasms (Dead End Brain). Lovingly curated, this deluxe collector's edition features exclusive liner notes, unpublished p…
Sorow
new work by David Jackman aka Organum after completing the recent "Holy" trilogy ('Sanctus', 'Amen' and 'Omega'). SOROW is not an album that expands the trilogy still farther, but opens a new chapter in Organum's career. On the basis of the European organ drones and the Indian Tanpura foundation, the gentle Japanese temple bell compliments the piece. ....
Freedom, Rhythm & Sound
This collection of rare album artwork reflects the independent energy of the African American jazz movement. Located in the heart of Soho in London, Soul Jazz Records is a musical oasis. While many of the quality record shops that once graced this area have closed their doors Soul Jazz seems to go from strength to strength. Stuart Baker and his partner Karen Tate oversee a thriving business which is driven by their own tastes and beliefs. A pragmatic duo, they recognize that the survival of Soul…
Hyste
A sequence of six duo improvisations on tenor saxophone & church organ recorded at St Peter’s, Whitstable in 2009.
Troubled, Shaken Etc
Another album of unclassifiable experimental songs from British band the Sian Alice Group, who blend elements of avant-rock, folk and dark, cinematic tones for a uniquely atmospheric, inter-disciplinary sound. A Stereolab-like mix of pop modernism and Terry Riley minimalism gets the album started ('Love That Moves The Sun'), before all momentum is dismantled in favour of fluid ambience on 'Airlock'. From here on the band continue to genre-hop before stumbling upon a rich vein of balladry on trac…
In Europe
Moondog’s first release after moving to Germany, “Moondog in Europe” is a very heavy listen. While there are some aspects of his quirky style, most of this album is drenched in seriousness. Despite this being his first slightly somber album though, Moondog cleverly inserts various rounds from “Moondog 2.” Like Roger Waters taking portions of melody and hooks from “The Wall” and incorporating them into his “The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking,” Moondog similarly borrows his own melodies, changing…
Grandfather Harmonic
The Preservation label presents Grandfather Harmonic, the new full-length album from Sparkling Wide Pressure. The alter ego of Murfreesboro, Tennessee's Frank Baugh, Sparkling Wide Pressure has drawn from a seemingly infinite well of sonic inspiration to record at an incredible rate since 2008, having his work appear on labels such as Digitalis, Stunned, Housecraft and Students Of Decay. This transfixing entry into his weighty catalog pinpoints Baugh's increasing fascination with song-forms…
42 Vexations
16 page booklet including Cage's Place In the Reception of Satie by Matthew Shlomowitz. Erik Satie's 1893 Vexations is musique d'ameublement - literally, "furniture music", the phrase coined by Satie in 1917, where he identifies sound as drapes, tiling, wallpaper - items belonging to the environment and changing it simply by being in it, by actually becoming elements of the space. This recording is the second instalment in a series of furniture music (after Marcel Duchamp's Musical Erratum), and…
Castings
The title of Fern Knight’s 2006 release, Music for Witches and Alchemists, served simultaneously as a wonderfully apt description and an unambiguous product warning. If you prefer the mundane to the magical, move on: These are not the druids you’re looking for. Since then, the group has relocated to Arlington from Philadelphia, and while Fern Knight’s music evokes far-away times and places, it turns out the band fits in nicely with the D.C. area’s musical history—assuming you can stomach …
Less Is More
The piano trio is probably one of the most common ensembles to be heard in jazz, and truth be told, I am a little weary of them, preferring the expressiveness of a horn section. Yet once in a while, a piano trio comes forward that has something new to tell. When I listened to WHO Trio's "The Current Underneath" (Leo Records) a couple of years ago, I was immediately enchanted by the sheer musicality of the project. This one, "Less Is More", is even better. The trio consists of Michel Wintsch on p…
Wireless
1st live album by Norway's Geir Jenssen - recorded in 2007 by Chris Watson & mastered by Touch stalwart BJNilsen. In the early 1990s, he was a pioneer of so-called "ambient techno," but since then, he has refined his sound into something more magnetic & enduring. Here, he incorporates samples of field recordings by Jony Easterby & trumpet by Anders Karlskas, invoking a sparser, more arresting sound.
Miniatures - Songs recycle
Pierre-Yves Macé is a young French composer, he was born in 1980, but has already released four albums on respected labels including Tzadik and Sub Rosa. Miniatures - Song Recycle is his second album for the Parisian imprint Brocoli, following the acclaimed Passagenweg. Miniatures - Song Recycle, as the title suggests, alternates musique concrète studies and songs in the form of lieder, where the voice is made of recycled, chopped and transformed a cappella vocals from YouTube, accompanied…
Un Jour Comme Tant D'Autres
This is an unreleased album from 1975 of studio/live material! Dieu has smiled upon us, for a previously shelved early album (1975) by Ilitch finally has its jour in the soleil. Thierry Müller's strange musical arc is further enriched and confounded by this exploratory cosmic release. A brilliant mix of Krauty space groans and experimentalism (see also Conrad Schnitzler and Ash Ra Temple, etc) and the progressive electronics of Igor Wakhevitch. There is some psych in the folds, and the albu…
Charlemagne & Pippin
Single 35+ minute excursion in typical BtC drones w/ added violin. Really organic sounding, loads of textures.