New Arrivals
Time of the Last Persecution
Time of the Last Persecution is Bill Fay's second and final album for the Deram label, originally released in 1971. An absolute classic of melancholy (borderline morbid) folk-rock that falls somewhere between Pearls Before Swine, Leonard Cohen, and a suicide prevention hotline. Time of the Last Persecution is almost single-mindedly obsessed with end times so it's fitting that this brilliant album would be his last release for over 30 years. Now that Fay is back with a new and highly laude…
Vibrant Forms
Double LP version. Kostas Soublis' productions under the Fluxion moniker helped define legendary Berlin imprint Chain Reaction, and with 1999's Vibrant Forms, the Greek producer released a milestone in the dub techno genre. Hazy and distant, there was still more than enough dancefloor push to propel Soublis into the (very short) list of genre legends, and make Vibrant Forms one of the very rare techno albums that works from beginning to end. Out of press for far too long, this new edition of…
Live
Founded in 1970 in Dusseldorf, Kraftwerk was the only German band to rise from the so-called 'krautrock' scene to true international stardom. Of course, it was partially their distinct look that set them apart. At a time when long hair and scruffy clothing was the norm for musicians, Kraftwerk cut their hair short and wore handmade suits. And at a time when guitar rock reigned supreme, Kraftwerk did not even have a guitar player. In fact they soon did away with instruments altogether, beco…
Ornate shroud
Hopefully MRTYU requires little introduction, because the project evades easy description. An odd compound of vedic imagery, metal misanthropy, and violin agony, this music moves away from any particular fan base in pursuit of its distant, darkened idols. Ornate shroud is MRTYU's most potent spawn to date. Hewing closer to song form than previous releases, the album conceals Antony Milton's violent guitar and violin work behind MRTYU's characteristic murk. Its pieces transition from jagged riffs…
Boring Embroidery
Boring embroidery features five beautiful, fragile yet raw improvisations for pianos and electronics performed by two of the UK's brightest talents. Picking up from where 2010's Turned moment, weighting release on Another Timbre left off, Boring Embroidery inhabits a slow, precise musical world that references Feldman and Tudor, yet remains resolutely improvised. Recorded in 2010 and 2011, this album possibly marks the end of the duo's piano collaborations but if so, it provides a perfectly matu…
Fleshpile sister
Fleshpile Thematic, released on The Tapeworm earlier this year, reconsidered as an album of dub versions. Smooth edges roughed out. Re-engineered space. All human vocals erased.
Backpages
Ron Morelli returns to stare down the 'floor with four pieces written during the stress-busting sessions for Spit (HOS 407CD/LP). The muggy, droning welt of "Public Consumption" kicks off with the sound of New York techno shot from the hip, while "Another Hit" vents a vintage era-Regis style built on skull-chipping snares and effluent acid modulation. The album's writhing batacuda banger, "Crack Microbes," reappears here as an extra-ferric extended "Version," sustaining the hypnotic intensi…
Love Song
"The singularly strange storytelling power of Jun Konagayas unit GRIM had been largely overlooked until haang niap records "Folk Songs For An Obscure Race" compilation of the groups early 80s material. Konagaya restarted the group in 2009 and these are their first new recordings - and a full album to boot. Split release between Art Into Life and Eskimo Records! A story in 8 volumes, ripe with deviant madness and gathered salvic capacity. Handmade clock artwork by Konagaya - each one is di…
Rehearsal tapes and alt. Takes NYC 1976-1978
"Connie Burg and I met Sumner Crane and Nancy Arlen in late 1975 and quickly decided to start a band. Sumner had been playing piano since he was a kid and I trumpet, guitar and more recently bass, but we were for the most part self taught. Connie decided to pick up a guitar and we started jamming in Nancy’s loft on Broadway and Duane St. where Sumner lived downstairs. For the first few months it was just piano, bass and acoustic guitar, with some paper bag percussion from Nancy. Our biggest rock…
Retro-2038
COH is the moniker used by Ivan Pavlov from Russia for more than a decade. COH is also the Russian word for \'sleep\'. Yet, do not be deceived - RETRO-2038 is much more of a deep space than a deep sleep. The second COH release on Editions Mego is a true delight to behold, inviting as it does its exploration of electronic sound in minimalism, futuristic pop and the uncharted territories inbetween. Ranging from digital updates of Giorgio Moroder\'s pulse experiments to menacing lingering LF…
Incognita
These works are a collaboration between the Japanese figure of experimental electronic music, KK Null, and Mexican artists and brothers Israel and Diego Martinez. Diego is best known as Lumen lab, and both are mentors of the label Abolipop - Suplex. The process started at the end of 2012 when Kazuyuki Kishino, based in Tokyo and Israel Martinez in Berlin, started to share electronic sounds and field recordings. They tried making new pieces exploring various approaches to composition such as the …
Light that comes, light that goes
One of two new releases from Brian Pyle (the other being 'Interval Signals'), Light that comes is a rich exploration of Ensemble Economique's range and power. With a palpable sense of the sublime throughout, the listener is guided through drones like the pillars and buttresses of a cathedral for a sombre new religion, into the sounds of the ocean (somehow elegiac), flute tones springing up in the fog like gravestones, and fallen kosmische. These are followed by the wonderfully odd 'As the Train …
Dance Classics Vol.II
2013 repress. Kouhei Matsunaga's Dance Classics Vol. II is the continuation of his ongoing development of his more dance-oriented material, as seen from his sets with Sensational and also his other minimal techno project, NHK. Not feeling tied down to one genre, Matsunaga nestles in the Pan roster. That isn't to say, however, that he is dance per se, as witnessed from his recent collaborations with Conrad Schnitzler. The album focuses more on bass/base electronics, music for the dancefloor …
Asphalt And Delay
Awesome brand new LP that marks the band’s first full length album foray in to the exploration of duo improvisation. Recorded over an extended period of time, in a secret midtown Manhattan location high above the city streets, this is their first record devoted entirely to duo improvisations. The LP also features striking silkscreen cover art by Yoko Tack.Since their late-1990s inception, White Out - as comprised by multi-instrumentalist Lin Culbertson and drummer Tom Surgal - have been one of t…
Live in Israel
Iancu Dumitrescu 'Liminal involvement' for ensemble. 'Le silence d'or' (Israel version) for ensemble and computer sounds. Ana-Maria Avram 'Lux animae XII' for ensemble and computer sounds. 'Telesma' (Israel version) for bass clarinet, ensemble and computer sounds. Contemporary Music Ensemble from Tel Aviv under direction Ilan Volkov with special guest Stephen O'Malley.
The Operetta
"The psychedelic find of the decade-their long-lost final magnum opus. Rumored to exist for years-often put down as just rumor though. Here it is, unearthed from tapes thought lost forever but now found after nearly 30 years. The first thing to be released from Ya Ho Wha 13 since 1975. In the spring of 1975 the Family was homeless and was travelling on the West Coast after having been driven out of Hawaii by local laws (they would return later that year for what would be the final time wi…
The eyes, the mouth Night of the ocean
Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon and XO4 and VAMPIRE BELT's Bill Nace team up for the third time (they also released a cassette and did a FEVER cover) showing no band needs a drummer to trash or mildly shake brains!basement jams after listening to basement jams, deep down in the deepest basement of the valley, 2 guitars fighting for a place on a chubby cassette recorder while the ultra no wave vocals of Kim Gordon ghostride thru a pretty packed parking lot.a throw back as well to early raw Sonic Youth d…
Live in LSO St. Luke's, London
Iancu Dumitrescu 'Extreme point of gravity' (2009) for ensemble (Hyperion & Talea Ensemble). 'Le silence d'or (V)' (2009) for ensemble and computer sounds. Ana-Maria Avram 'Telesma (X)' for three percussion groups and computer sounds (G. Aguilar, P. Teodorescu, A. Lipovsky). 'Textures (III) / Penumbra' for two bass clarinets (Rane Moore and Tim Hodgkinson) and ensemble (Hyperion & Talea Ensemble).
Blank Generation
2013 repress. Exact repro vinyl version of the debut Richard Hell album, originally issued by Sire in 1977; 180 gram vinyl . "Hell formed the Voidoids, whose unwavering individualism kept the group out of the big time while producing a demanding and impressive corpus of work. 'I was saying let me out of here before I was even born.' That lyric sums up Hell's attitude, which he expanded and perfected on Blank Generation with a new version of the title track and such powerful statements as 'Love C…
Alien, All Too Alien
Their cat may well be all too alien but there's quite an earthly feel to this epic voyage of a record from the brothers Maurizio and Roberto Opalio. It feels like you are slowly drifting through different continents perched on a floating glass-domed steel barge, observing the strangely contrasting cultures go about their business, seemingly unaware they are being watched. Though there are certain sounds contained herein that are quite familiar to many 21st century homosapie…