New Arrivals
Monsters & Miasmas
Brian Cook (TERMINALS) & wife Maryrose make up this long-running project who's releases on Ajax/3 Beads of Sweat & Siltbreeze have continued to tread a line between haunting country-esque ballads & the brand of noise-rock for which the Terminals is known.
Box music
Rutger and Stephen sort of accidentally met through e-mail. A simple note regarding an ordering question for a CD led to an enthusiastic e-mail conversation and climaxed in a musical collaboration. This all happened in a very short period, both musicians being very inspired by the concept of “exchange,” as a means to cross space and time -- Rutger living in the Netherlands and Stephen in Virginia.
Most of the time, when (electronic) musicians work together it’s a matter of swapping digital files…
Nowhere
1998 reissue, orginally released in 1984. A combination of spacey electro-pop, dub and dark avant-rock influences, Phantom Band is one of the most authentically weird, essential and yet surprisingly overlooked organisms orbiting the Can universe. This is the third and final album from the project, masterminded by Can drummer Jaki Liebezeit, featuring Dominik von Senger (Dunkelziffer, Damo Suzuki Band/Network) on guitar, Helmut Zerlett (e.g. Dunkelziffer, Unknown Cases) on keyboards and Sheldon A…
Running away
Guillaume Viltard, doublebass. Recorded in 2008 studio and outdoor. The CD comes in a very special package made by visual artist Zéhavite Cohen. 300 copies. 'There followed a solo double bass performance that was added late to the bill from Guillaume Viltard, a young musician that has been playing a lot at the weekly Eddie Prevost workshop. I had seen him play before, most recently in a duo with his frequent playing partner Ute Kanngiesser, but never solo, and I have to admit to being taken by s…
Inanimate Nature
the first title in yasunori saito’s exhaustive survey of the music of masayuki takayanagi via his jinya disc imprint... the arrival of these discs in the mms catalogue has been a long time in the making; extremely glad to have these seminal documents of free-scrape/noise-guitar crossover in stock !!!this disc features takayanagi on solo “tabletop guitar” as recorded “aug 4, 1990 at ‘new direction for the arts, regular concert vol.69’ jean jean tokyo” - nothing at all like fred frith, keith rowe,…
Music In And On The Air
"A major gap in Clara Rockmore's recorded legacy will be closed with the release of Music In and On the Air, a CD derived from a live 1979 WQXR broadcast. To celebrate the 9th anniversary of a series called The Listening Room, Clara brought her theremin to The New York Times building, and before a full house in the auditorium there, played solos and chamber pieces with her renowned pianist-sister Nadia Reisenberg, the superb violinist Erick Friedman, and eight members of the Violincello Society.…
Huge
Following the critical acclaim which has greeted EP 1 Bloom, Die Stadt and Janet Records are proud to announce that Huge EP 2 in the 'Neither Speak Nor Remain Silent' limited edition series by Fovea Hex is out. Fovea Hex continues to shape-shift and to evade & confound those who bray 'what exactly IS it?,' and 'where does it BELONG exactly?,' and 'who exactly belongs to IT?'. If you must bang on the table like that, you won't hear a thing. If this music can be described as 'up-to-the-momen…
Stundenbuch/Book of Hours
Solo piano, performed by Roger Woodward. "It is fitting that Hans Otte's Stundenbuch/Book Of Hours, recorded by pianist Roger Woodward on a Bösendorfer at the Radio Bremen concert hall, is a co-production between Celestial Harmonies and Radio Bremen. The piece was commissioned by Radio Bremen for its Pro Musica Nova 1996, the highly-regarded biennial festival for contemporary music founded (in 1961) and directed (from 1962) by Hans Otte, during his tenure as Head of Music at Radio Bremen (1959 t…
Tasogare: Live in Tokyo
Recorded live on April 10th and 11th, 2010, Tasogare: Live in Tokyo documents the performances of five 12k artists at two temples in Tokyo, Japan. Komyoji Temple (April 10th) saw the first-ever performance in Japan by Australia’s Solo Andata, known for creating deep, textured music with found objects, homemade instruments and very little in the way of electronics or software tricks. The duo was joined by 12k veteran Sawako whose voice and delicate computer work were accompanied by guitarist Hofl…
Wege
Wege translates as 'path' and it's a fitting title for the latest rendering from master percussionist and experimental composer Andrea Belfi. The albums' four pieces act as orientation points through some imaginary sonic landscape. Wege is Belfi's forth LP (the first with Room40), and stems entirely from compositions completed at two artist-in-residence projects in Austria (Hotel Pupik) and in Brussels (Q-O2 Werkplatz). The album is built around a cyclic electro-acoustic system, through which Be…
Litany Of Echoes
It was once easy to think of James Blackshaw as an inheritor of the Takoma tradition, a school of searching acoustic guitar playing pioneered by John Fahey, Robbie Basho, Leo Kottke, and others in the 1960s. But listening to the English guitarist's new album, it's clear it's not that simple. While echoes of those three and some of their contemporaries are still present in Blackshaw's music, these days you can hear just as much Terry Riley and Philip Glass in his work. His synthesis of acoustic e…
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.
Surface of the Earth
Gunn Amps and Smashed Guitars. Surface of the Earth was recorded live to cassette, using two microphones in a wooden community hall in Wellington, New Zealand. The lp was gathered from two or three recording sessions in 1994/95. Back then we used to book out the hall for a couple of days, set up our gear and then record everything. It was a very atmospheric room for recording. Tony and Donald would put their guitars through their two old Gunn valve amplifiers and get to work. Tony often used thi…
Wayfaring Strangers: Guitar Soli
another gem, a wonderful collection of obscure solo acoustic guitar tunes from the mid 60s up to the dawn of the 80s -- beautiful work from a slew of players we've never heard of -- but we'd put right up there with Fahey and Basho in the way they reach from the back porch to the cosmos with just their fingers and some strings! One thing we love about this set, and the Numero Group releases to date, is how deep they dig and what beauty they unearth, somehow with impeccable sound quality. S…
Gayageum Sanjo
Sub Rosa presents a release by composer/violinist Baudouin de Jaer. Gayageum Sanjo: compositions for 12-string gayagrum, Prelude, 5 sanjo and 10 studies. According to legend and to recent archeological digs, the gayageum is a millennial zither-like instrument featured in all Korean traditional repertoires. "Sanjo" is usually translated as "scattered melodies." This style of music was informed by southwestern shamanic music (Sinawi) and the great epic songs (Pansori) from the same regi…
Under foot
Rusalka is a female noise artist based in Vancouver with past works on What We Do is Secret, Ruido Horrible and Dead Audio Tapes.Under Foot is worship. The worship of women and sound. It is sacred filth. Based on the novel ‘Venus In Furs’ about sexual cruelty, servitude and female dominance, Under Foot strips away illusions. It is a complete submersion into disharmony. The disharmony of desire for degradation. The disharmony of a woman wielding the whip. The desire to be sonically and spirituall…
Oort
David Chiesa - double bass. Jean-Sébastien Mariage - acoustic guitar. Recorded by Pierre-Henri Thiébaut at école Britten in Périgueux.
My Father Will Guide Me Up A Rope To The Sky
After a fourteen year absence, Michael Gira resurrects his legendary apocalyptic no-wave band for a fabulous new album on his own Young God imprint. Assembling a cast of musicians that includes familiar Swans and Angels Of Light conspirators, Gira also welcomes a few new members to the fold with guest stars including Devendra Banhart, Mercury Rev's Grasshopper, Bill Rieflin (of Ministry, REM and Robyn Hitchcock's band), Shearwater multi-instrumentalist Thor Harris and even Gira's three-and-a-hal…
Birdtalking
'When dealing with female interpreters of the art of advanced vocalism, four personal favourites come to mind : Diamanda Galàs, Meredith Monk, Shelley Hirsch and - more recently - Non Credo's Kira Vollman. I'm afraid that I'll have to add a fifth chair at the table. I had already met Ute Wassermann in a great CD on Creative Sources, Kunststoff, a duo with trumpet player Birgit Ulher; yet, Birdtalking is one of those records that immediately raise all aerials, a top-rank effort in which a single …
All Is Falling
The ultra savant of 12-string mantra cycles expands further into cinematic, orchestral glory - an orgy of organic, deeply felt & exquisitely played pathways to the sublime. His 1st foray into the realm of the electric 12-string guitar. Comprised of one slowly evolving, shifting piece of music in eight parts, replete w/ swirling string cycles & wind instruments augmenting his extended pointillist flurries w/ clouds of sound, sometimes adding delicate counter-melodies but just as often feed…