New Arrivals
And
Derek Bailey, electric guitar. Pat Thomas, keyboards. Steve Noble, turntables. Recorded at Moat Studios, London, August 1997.
Pressure
just wild and free. virginia genta (golden jooklo age, etc.) on tenor saxophone and andrew barker exploding drums. paste-on cover art. edition of only 115 numbered copies.
Medusa’s Lair
Filleted over two sides of wax, here we have a rare meet up of three of the brightest lights in the Twin Cities’ musical orbit. On March 21, 2009, PAUL METZGER—best known for his transcendental gypsy raga guitar and banjo meditations—jumped in the ring with percussionist DAVU SERU and veteran multi-instrumentalist MILO FINE for an evening of uncompromising spontaneous composition. Medusa’s Lair is stunning, inscrutably wily, living music. One-time edition of 300 LPs pressed on 180-gram virgin vi…
Outdoor Spell
Rhys Chatham has trail-blazed a course through late 20th century music, equally aplomb in post-minimalist composition as he is in punk. Not since Roebling laid his span across the East River has there been an artist who builds bridges in both how we hear music and how we can appreciate art. His latest album, Outdoor Spell, is a further document in that direction. Here has has eschewed 100 guitars, or even himself playing a single guitar, for the trumpet and voice, both electrified and dry. It is…
Third Mouth
British avant pop artist Alexander Tucker releases his much anticipated new album, Third Mouth, on Thrill Jockey in 2012. This album builds on the strengths revealed by his landmark debut for the label, Dorwytch released in April 2011, culminating in his finest work to date. Using songs written over a 12 month period he achieves his own inimitable blend of psych rock and ambient pop using a variety of studio crafted effects, rudimentary beats, guitar and bass, as well as synth and cello drone…
ABCDEFG-HIJKLMNOP-QRSTUV-WXYZ
Starring’s ABCDEFG-HIJKLMNOP-QRSTUV-WXYZ combines minimalist musical patterns with dreamy poetry to create a new style front-woman Clara Hunter likes to call “sparkle prog.” It captures the frenetic energy of the band’s live show, but here it is overlain with a new palate of synthesizers, delay effects, drum processing, aux percussion, and vocals that create delicate, but sometimes radical juxtapositions between the lyrical and the experimental. Though songs like “the best” and “aphonia” …
Cosmic Tones For Mental Therapy
This disc brings together the Sun Ra recordings "Cosmic Tones For Mental Therapy" and "Art Forms Of Dimensions Tomorrow" (recorded in 1963 and '61-'62 respectively). Cosmic Tones functions as a kind of blueprint for the sort of large-scale jazz weirdness that would inform much of Sun-Ra's subsequent works, featuring the woozy reeds of 'And Otherness' and the afro-jazz experiments of 'Thither And Yon'. On 'Adventure Equation' a space echo treatment on the recording which is reprised for the sax f…
Sun Circle
The most recent release on the lichen label; all releases are hand-assembled by zach wallace in his native ann arbor environs and offer of a lovely wave of art-sound, field recordings, improvisation with natural non-instruments, and, in the case of this particular title, a pair of pieces by greg davis and zach himself on farfisa, distorted vocals, and bells. the first appears to be a zonked “cover” of lamonte young’s “31 vii 69 10:26 - 10:49 pm munich from map of 49's dream the two systems of el…
6pezzi2009+lagodelnulla
Aggressive loop music based on sounds from photographic equipment and african field recordings. Besides being an early-Reich cheap imitation, ‘lagodelnulla’ is an italian expression (roughly translated as ‘lakeofnothingness’) found in an old Banda-Ngao lullaby (Central Africa, early ’60s). An ‘objet trouvé’ elevated as social commentary by the author. Volume encouraged. 35 minutes, transparent vinyl. Edition of 100 copies in recycled chipboard sleeve with silkscreened sheet (printed by Ped…
Espoo
Vladislav Delay's EP Espoo features two conceptual, rhythm-intense tracks. Whereas the groove of the opener "Olari" derives from a sound loop which is manipulated by filters and echoes, the reverse is done with "Kolari." Starting from an impulsive, staccato beat, a sound carpet is woven by means of modifiers which gradually shape a permanent melody, close to Terry Riley's minimalistic concepts. Both tracks share a linear increase in density, and because of their break with the common four…
July 19, 2006
may 2009 release: label-less lp release (“private,” if you will) covering the first ever duo set between myself & geoff mullen, recorded in concert at the brendan murray-curated “uppercase sound #2” event @ pa’s lounge, somerville, ma, 02143, usa, on july 19th, 2006 ...the music is entirely improvised, with geoff sticking largely to a suitcase-electronics-based setup (although he does provide some fine guitar & pedal alterations throughout) & myself to the doepfer (ditto guitar & korg guitar-syn…
Spectrum 008
A new collection of killer, tempered synthesizer workouts from Darren Ho on Spectrum Spools. The seven tracks featured have are have the kind of fragile beauty - and playfulness - that we associate with the early electronic music of Wendy Carlos, Daphne Oram, Raymond Scott and their ilk. There's a strong narrative arc to the album, but each track explores distinct territory: 'Slow Sum' parts one and two' are playful agglomerations of phased analogue patterns, 'In Peru' a Budd/Roedelius-style amb…
The Conjurer
This new long player finds the duo finally documenting something that is a bit closer to their very heavy live sets, w/ expanding peaks of white light distortion & enormous valleys of bottom end. Each side opens w/ a brief funeral dirge to set the mood, a precession of bare bones drum beats & bell like guitar statements that bridge the gap to the wider open spaces of the almost side long "Across The Desert Of Ash" & "Ancient Of Days."
After Before
Fantastic document of higher-minded drone ritual from a trio that features Taketo Shimada. Shimada is a shadowy figure in fringe minimalism. He worked as Henry Flynt’s assistant, put together the Yoshi Wada week at the Emily Harvey Foundation, was involved with Herbert Huncke, Alison Knowles and a bunch of other Fluxus artists. Messages is an extended investigation into the eternal music concepts of Wada, LaMonte Young, Charlemagne Palestine, Pandit Pran Nath et al, with Shimada on bass a…
World Complete
Harmonizer, or as lovingly referred to as HARMO around these parts is the Vermont duo of Toby Aronson and Greg Davis, whose previous effort, their self-titled debut on Aronson's own stellar NNA Tapes label was the definitive 5th world statement, and solidified them as sensais in the koan of new drone worship shared by the likes of fellow melodic noisers Caboladies and OPN. In fact Greg Davis (Kranky, Carpark) is zone veteran shredder whose explorations into pastoral electronics have been w…
Lauschen
"Kluster (1969) metamorphosed into Cluster (1971) and Cluster became Qluster (2011). In a period spanning over 40 years, Hans-Joachim Roedelius was a driving force behind this unique transformation. Now, as Qluster, he has recorded together with Onnen Bock in the latest incarnation. Three albums already released document the current status of their musical journey to pastures new. Lauschen is not a studio album, but a live recording of a performance for which Roedelius and Bock invited world mus…
Echohaus
LP version. “This latest project by the Hamburg-based musician, composer, and futurist, Felix Kubin, (his second release on Dekorder) is a collaboration with the contemporary music chamber group, ensemble Intégrales, and the reknowned German underground pop producer and sound engineer, Tobias Levin. Echohaus was recorded in and around Levin’s Electric Avenue studio in the basement of Westwerk, a former squat and cultural centre for non-commercial art and music in Hamburg. A special recording tec…
Sólaris
The power of Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris is not in its futuristic sets, or in the hypnotic shots of the alien planet’s weird, fluid surface, but it’s in the way he juxtaposes his alien, futuristic elements against the intimately familiar. This is a future not just of flashing lights and video screens, but of wood and wool and leather, of dogs and horses, books and photographs. In Frost & Bjarnason’s SÓLARIS we do find the futuristic, gaseous atmospheres and pulses one might expect from a sci-fi s…
Split
Brand new split LP from fellow Manchester weirdos A Middle Sex and Gnod. Gnod follow on from some killer releases over the last couple of years, a split 7" with Bong, a tape on Not Not Fun, and most recently a collaborative LP with White Hills. The oddly titled 15 minute 'Why Don't You Smile Like The Other Children?' opens with hazy strings and cosmicly far out voices, this slow groove packs a multi-coloured burst of rhythmic psychedelic vibes. On the flip side, A Middle Sex take up duties of do…
beet5 / Nervures
Limited edition of 200 copies. beet5 takes Beethoven’s Fifth Piano Concerto as its starting point. The slow movement was recorded using a special turntable for the blind that plays back records at quarter speed. I had an old recording of the piece lying around; I forget who the pianist was. The slowed down version was very striking, recognisable as Beethoven’s music but much sadder, more fragile. I developed a piece around this, using my usual array of synthesized sounds, field recordings, ‘borr…