New Arrivals
Moved by magnets
Stunning release from Cristian Vogel and SØS Gunver Ryberg as SGR^CAV for The Tapeworm. The label informs us that "Their compositions encourage the listener to observe and explore the resonances of a powerful musical awareness" and 'Moved By Magnets' exhibits a keen sense of spatial perception, tone and presence which entirely justifies that claim. Over four pieces they explore diffuse, free-formed spaces charged with a slow-moving, chaotic sort of energy ranging from the shuddering metallic res…
The Nethack Dictionary
In March 2005, drummer Teun Vergruggen (Jef Neve Trio, Flat Earth Society) invited the eccentric guitar player Mauro Pawlowski (dEUS, Somnambula) and Rhodes/piano wizard Jozef Dumoulin (Määk Spirit, Magic Malik, Octurn) to play a single session based on pure improvisation. The result left most people wondering how to categorize this music, and brought Othin Spake on the stage for many concerts. Six years later, the band has played in many jazz and alternative venues in Europe, released three …
The Just Reproach
The Just Reproach documents the second concert given by John Tilbury and Oren Ambarchi as a duo. When they first performed together in Reykjavik, Iceland in March 2012, the aptness of the pairing was evident. When they reprised the duo at London's Cafe OTO in September the same year in the concert presented here, the city was in the midst of a heatwave. With the air-conditioning turned off to accommodate the low volume of the performance, the uncomfortable squirming of the audience members…
Processes & potentials
So much music claims to capture the moment. But as Processes & Potentials proves, in-the-momentness can be a malleable concept. The result of three years of studio work, the album sees Bjarni Gunnarsson following his longstanding interest in exploring liquid states, transformational activities and the complex relationships between cause and effect. It is music which behaves differently, unexpectedly, veering off into surprising directions and never staying in one place for too long Ð it is certa…
Survivalist Tales!
Emil Amos, world renowned as drummer of the illustrious experimental rock groups Om and Grails, has an increasingly prolific, though relatively unknown, solo career under the moniker Holy Sons. Home recording over 1000 songs since the project's inception in 1992, Amos has spent the better part of the last two decades honing his song writing and production skills over a wide swath of genres in a mission to capture his internal world sonically. Only a handful of shows have ever been pla…
Guitars From Agadez Vol. 7
In October 2012, the Tamashek community lost one of its most luminous voices when Koudede's life was cut short by a car crash during his trip home to Niger from Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. Koudede was a leading light among the myriad musical groups that have recently proliferated in Niger and Mali to voice the Tuareg struggle against exploitation and to exalt their proud but waning nomadic heritage. His outstanding reputation and corpus of songs garnered the respect of his contemporaries, and his…
Navajo sunrise
Daniel Carter's relaxed phrasing moves naturally between Parker's earthly bass sound and Ughi's sensitive drumming. This trio's music seems to be possessed by a light and welcoming spirit. A constant flux of energy, a three way dialogue consumed within the time and space of one breath. Telling the story of the trio's origins, the musicians talk about dreams and desires while the body of this music takes shape within the human connection of the band's relationship which has grown over time, throu…
Living on the Invisible Line
Since 1997 Italian brother duo My Cat Is An Alien has been documenting an ever deepening musical dreamscape, their massive body of work representing some of the most emotive and soulful improvised experimentalism in underground music. Recorded in a remote region of the Western Alps, this latest LP navigates especially tranquil territory as it builds blissed-out pastoral mirages, dappled just slightly with glimmers of an outer darkness. Like much of the duo's best work, Living On the Invis…
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 to…
Live At Skymall
Jan Jelinek, Hanno Leichtmann and Andrew Pekler have formed a trio that can truly be called a supergroup. As solo artists, all three members are among the most renowned of Berlin's electronic musicians. When playing together as Groupshow, the three instrumentalists -- themselves largely informed by minimalist sensibilities -- engage with the idiom of free-form collective improvisation, which has a long tradition in Germany dating back to the days of Fluxus and Krautrock. Consequentially, t…
Lieu
FaravelliRatti is a duo comprised of Nicola Ratti (guitar) and Attila Faravelli (computer) who play with a tower of different prepared speakers and a taper recorder in between them. The idea is to fed speakers with different languages in the same space and have them resonate with the phisical space. Every speaker is prepared and positioned so the resonance can be controlled by the players, moving their bodies around the sound totem in between them. Their live set represent this idea, of building…
Neuro Habitat
Reissue of the private LP, issued in an edition of 300 copies in 1982 and titled in original Mörder Unter Uns/Neuro Habitat , considered with Regel one of the Maurizio Bianchi's most representative works , Neuro Habitat is finally reissued for the first time in vinyl and remastered under the supervision of the Milanese artist. Side A "Morder Unter Uns" made of puzzled motifs and effects is a dark, sinister mantra to oppressive musical experiences. The piece finishes in an industry of molecular, …
Ten Thousand Points Of Light: The 20th Anniversary Edition
Kitsch alert! Worshipper at the shrine of Elvis, fans of unabashed bad taste, followers of pop culture, take note. Ten Thousand Points Of Light, originally released in 1991 and now available on DVD for the very first time, is a wry, understated and terrifically funny look at The Townsends, a suburban Atlanta family who, every holiday season for eight years, transformed their Stone Mountain area brick ranch house into a meteoric blaze of Christmas lights. Known as both "the Christmas House" …
The holistic worlds of
Michael Wintsch, piano, synthesizer. Christian Weber, bass. Christian Wolfarth, drums. Ten years ago Michel Witsch (piano, synthesizer), Christian Weber (bass) and Christian Wolfarth (drums) met - 3 musicians who have not only shaped the European scene of improvisation in the most different formations but who also catch an ear with the maybe most relevant aspect in music whatsoever: SOUND. Wintsch, Weber and Wolfrath make music with a breathtaking mental vigor. The long time working band has…
Bitter Suites
Deluxe repress edition of this incredible masterpiece made out of two live performances of the U.S. Steel Cello Ensemble recorded in 1979 at The Showing Room in NYC and at Helen Shlien Gallery in Boston. The Ensemble performs playing large sheets of metal and producing amazingly droning sounds. These live recordings are the result of an evolutionary refinement of instrumental design and playing techniques which Robert Rutman explored and develped after a ten year period of practice. He inv…
Minimal Milan
Lovely compilation selected by Xiu (Oksana Rodionova) consisting of contemporary minimal electronic and deviant-techno artists based in Milan, Italy. Here's the label's mission statement as you could say: "The musical aesthetism defended by the label admits connections with post-modern qualities and challenges conventions for an innovative musical conversation between analogue instrumentation and technologies." The label will host various types of electronic music always seen throught a dark and…
Ritual Totemic Stone
By now, the significance of Sam McKinlay's extensive body of work is undeniable. After having begun his mapping of the depths of monomania, fetish, addiction, and vice, in the mid-1990s with his flagship project, The Rita, McKinlay briefly halted his work in the early 2000s. Though it was unforeseeable at the time, McKinlay's return to substantial recording output and live performances around 2004 would quickly and permanently alter the landscape of Harsh Noise. The Rita became one of the most …
Home Is The Sun
Invisible Things is the duo of guitarist Mark Shippy (U.S. Maple) and drummer Jim Sykes (Parts & Labor). Well beyond the stereotypical thoughts of a guitar, drum improv/jam session, the drumming is based the study of Sri Lankan percussion and applied to the modern drum kit. This foundation of the drums allows for explorations by the guitar that is tight and sparse one moment and then seamlessly shifted into majestic swirls of reverberation. The album, comprised of 17 tracks, is presented as on…
Broken Hearted Dragonflies
There is a legend in Burma stating that swarms of male dragonflies gather to join in choruses of high-pitched tones to court their mates. The ones that don't succeed in mating eventually scream so loud that their chests explode and they drop dead to the ground. These recordings are a tribute to this legend. Droning cicadas, dragonflies, and other insects display their charm as masters of the high frequency airwaves, recorded live and unprocessed by Tucker Martine in the lush settings of L…
Apophenia
Belgian/Italian duo Andrea Taeggi and Koenraad Ecker isolate a diffuse mixture of techno and concrète noise with 'Apophenia' for Opal Tapes. Building on the decayed structures of last year's 'Contrapasso' album, their latest blends the chaotic virtues of their improvisational approach with a more premeditated logic, manifesting five arcane constructions balancing abstract expression and rugged, grooving purpose. In that sense it works well alongside Opal Tapes' boss Basic House, but Lumisokea's …