New Arrivals
Natsu No Sebone
Alto saxophonist Masayoshi Urabe and percussionist Toshi Ishizuka recorded this extended improvisation at Tokyo's Apia Club, quietly ferocious music with a unique physicality. "Thrilling, blood-shaking, soul-scraping and defiantly non-sexless improv set from two Japanese titans. Recorded live at the Apia club in Tokyo in December last year, this set showcases Urabe's uniquely physical approach to improvisation -- ferociously concentrated, contorted, sweating and eruptive with physical power. Hi…
Luz Azul
Ah now, this is a lovely little CD. The group i treni inerti began life a decade or so ago now as the trio of Ruth Barberan, Alfredo Costa Monteiro and Matt Davis, and when their first album came out as one of the very first Creative Sources releases however long ago Brian Olewnick wrote what to this day remains one of my favourite opening lines to a review- something like “Yeah I can hear you sigh, yet another trumpet/trumpet/accordion trio…” In 2012, as David has long left Barcelona the group …
Aum air
Meeting of 3 guitar players. Recorded live at Penguin House, Tokyo on January 22nd, 2005.
Golden Worry
"‘Golden Worry’ features new drummer Emmanuel Nicolaidis and is huge step forward from 2008’s ‘Terrible Two’. The band has kept busy touring with Beach House, Celebration, Dan Deacon, Zomes, Battles, Mi Ami, Jason Urick, and Future Islands. The CD version comes in a four panel mini-LP style gatefold package. "
Spiritual Jazz 3: Europe
Esoteric, modal and deep jazz from the European underground, 1963-1972. At the end of the '50s, Miles Davis' Kind of Blue heralded the revelatory arrival of modal jazz. As the vibrations of these giant steps resonated across the world, European jazz musicians reassessed their bearings and began to steer a new course. Across the continent, they sent roots down into the rich soil of the European folk and Christian liturgical traditions, extended their music along ancient routes of communicat…
The Yelm Sessions
Another important piece of the elusive and hermetic Eyvind Kang puzzle. This newest studio project from one of the most consistently interesting young composer/performers working today is instantly Kang’s most adventurous, varied and ambitious recordings to date. Featuring many of his most illustrious musical associates as well as several orchestral ensembles from around the world, this new CD brings Kang’s exuberant gift for orchestration and lyricism together with a keen sense of the miraculou…
Novaya Zemlya
Novaya Zemlya (lit. "New Land"), also known in Dutch as "Nova Zembla" and in Norwegian as "Gåselandet" (lit. the "Goose Land"), is an archipelago in the Arctic Ocean in the north of Russia and the extreme northeast of Europe, the easternmost point of Europe, lying at Cape Flissingsky on the northern island. The artwork, by Jon Wozencroft, includes an essay by Thierry Charollais, "Thomas Köner's Novaya Zemlya: towards a metaphysical geography"... Of course we find the unique Köneresque glow…
Under Stellar Stream
For his latest album, UK avant-folk maverick Richard Youngs seems to be converging on some of the most assured and firm-footed vocal work of his career to date, fashioning rock-solid songs from typically leftfield instrumental tactics. On 'Broke Up By Night', Youngs sounds like a gnarled old folkie of almost Ewan MacColl proportions, albeit accompanied by organ drone and wispy electronics. It's a rather magical, mantra-like cadence he elicits, and the album springboards nicely from this point. S…
Clear and Not Clear
Another due reissue of valuable New Wave materials “Made In Italy” that stretches around thirty-seven tracks contained on a double CD. Bi Nostalgia was the solo project of Luca Rigato, already part of the duo Endless Nostalgia. Composed and recorded between 1984 and 1987 (with the addition of one more recent unreleased track), all songs have been completely remastered from the original master tapes of "Anthems for Losers", "Dances of the Pessimism", "The Seeping Mouth”, “Cathedrals EP","Art Is N…
Lichtung
Lichtung is a collaborative project centered around an audio-visual installation. Sound artists Steve Roden and Rutger Zuydervelt (aka Machinefabriek) composed the audio, while the video element was provided by the German visual artist Sabine Bürger. The Mindelsee Lake, situated just a few hundred yards away from the gallery, became the natural focus of the installation. During their stay, Sabine and Rutger recorded the video and audio footage that became the foundation which Steve Roden res…
Omni
Kato Hideki (electric bass with prime number tuning, bass synthesizer). Tetuzi Akiyama (prepared electric guitar, electronics). Toshimaru Nakamura (mixer, headphones, electric guitar). Recorded live by Kato Hideki at SuperDeluxe in Tokyo on November 25, 2008. Concert organized by Noda Shigenori Callithump). Live sound engineering by Noribumi Uchida (SuperDeluxe). Mixed and mastered by Kato Hideki at Shadow World Studio in Brooklyn, NY in 2009. 'Time is an essential subject in music. Conventional…
Live In Leugen
In December 2009 Zebra (Roel Meelkop & Frans de Waard) were invited to play a hommage to Martin Hannett, the legendary producer of Joy Division, A Certain Ratio and Section 25 (to mention Zebra's favorites). This was the start of a long Factory Records weekend in Brussels. Zebra picked their favorite Martin Hannett productions and sprinkled them some further with their extraordinary electronic means to create a groovy, dense slab of music. This album is called 'Live In Leugen'. Leugen is the dut…
We Who Had Left
Necks pianist Chris Abrahams teams up with electronic artist and sound artist Alessandro Bosetti for six introspective and mysterious tracks that mix Necks like progress with ambient electronics and curious monologs, and one waltz.The piano recital format number one: a pompous italian tenor, his round belly almost exploding inside his tuxedo, stands beside the gigantic grand piano, holding a hand on it while protruding forwards. Outside the stage, an imaginary oceanic audience is seated on hundr…
Massacre
In "massacre" Wolfgang Mitterer presents us with a passionate analysis of a timeless threesome: power, religion and violence. An opera for five singers, nine musical instruments and electronics.Based on Christopher Marlowe’s drama »The massacre at Paris«, Wolfgang Mitterer paints an acoustic picture of destruction, conspiracy and the thrill of power. His protagonists virtually rid themselves of their identities, turning into typological representations of different points of view. The concrete e…
Glass Armonica
In its two hundred year history, the glass armonica has played many roles. It was a serious attempt by Benjamin Franklin to create a new instrument for the classical repertoire; believed to cause insanity in its players, it gained traction as an object of superstition; a century or more in historical obscurity ensued, followed by its revival as a compositional curiosity for a handful of composers and as an exotic timbre in soundtracks and on pop records. More recently, Christina Kubisc…
Bell Trove Spools
Northern Spy is proud to present two of John Butcher’s most recent experiments in moving sound waves through space. On Bell Trove Spools we hear Butcher in two distinct situations: Richmond Hall, a Houston art gallery housing a permanent Dan Flavin collection that has been compared to a bowling alley; and the high-ceilinged marble room in Brooklyn which is the new home to Issue Project Room. Butcher is heard on his two saxes of choice, the soprano and the tenor, and suspended in space, fluid, ch…
Never Bought Never Sold: Singles + Demos 1979-83
"Animals + Men -- named after a song by Adam and the Ants -- started life around the winter of 1978-1979 when Susan Wells took over vocal duties in what was a three piece called Psychotic Reaction. Based in Frome Somerset, their first release Don't Misbehave in the New Age (1980) was an indie hit. When the band split in '81, Susan and Ralph formed the Terraplanes. A & M/Terraplanes released three vinyl 45s. A few years ago, demos by the band surfaced on the Messthetics/Hyped 2 Death label. Recen…
Lifetime Of Romance
Heartland synthesist Dylan Ettinger follows up 2010's widely lauded New Age Outlaws imaginary cyber-soundtrack with a stark, dark, and intensely different collection of misshapen new wave weirdnesses, Lifetime Of Romance. Recorded at a proper studio, and written over the course of a year, the seven songs of Romance reflect a heavy influence from the fringier strains of bummed out quasi-industrial synth-pop in the vein of Fad Gadget, certain Cabaret Voltaire, early Human League, etc, but dra…
Silent Partner
There’s probably not much to say about punk’s continued existence. Like jazz or sitcoms or party politics, it just carries on eating and breathing and shitting and propogating. It’s only interesting when someone comes along trying to advance the form. Like “Arrested Development” or Dennis Kucinich, they’re usually forgotten. This would all be relevant if Neptune were a punk band, which we’re not at all sure is the case. They create a sense of undermining the status quo, which is pretty pun…
Every live is problem solving
A suggestive gallery of abstract images, confused fragments of life and real living experiences, sights of urban landscapes... Noisy and electronic interferences, mechanical machines movements, concrete noises, low frequences fluxes, hissing sounds, interferences, but also melodic acoustic guitar pieces, human voices and other field recordings... A brave, uncompromising and heterogeneous "decomposed" mosaic of avantgarde sound art beyond time, beyond any point of view and any geometric coordina…