New Arrivals
Heartbreaker / Look At The People
Initially conceived in Louisville in 1978 from the ashes of two local punk bands by Tony Pinotti, Bruce Witsiepe (coming from No Fun) and Rik and Dave Letendre (coming from I-Holes), the band Circle X moved to New York soon after. They encountered there a young german painter, Ralph Neun, linked to the art school of Darmstadt. Ralph Neun was living in NYC for about a year, and decided to record a song evoking the city: Rolling Stones' 'Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker)'. Ralph Neun booked…
Live in Roma
Although Alvin Curran is almost universally recognized as one of the leading figure of the late 20th Century musical avant-garde, he has never received the recognition he deserves in the form of a proper publication. This is in fact the first book ever to present a complete and coherent picture of this gigantic figure of experimental music. A radical experimentalism and a kind of innate volatility have, in fact, long kept the person and the work of Alvin Curran, one of the historic founder…
The Atrocity Exhibition
Amazing experimental film with music by Jim Thirwell (Foetus). J.G. Ballard once said that the Atrocity Exhibition had been considered his only ‘unfilmable’ novel. Until Jonathan Weiss' feature adaptation of this infamous work of experimental fiction, a film which Ballard calls, ‘a poetic masterpiece’. Of all the films made of Ballard's fiction, only The Atrocity Exhibition contains a full length DVD commentary by the author himself. Less a commentary than a philosophical discourse on the nature…
Induced Musical Spasticity: B.C. Free Music Society (1984-2009)
Major archival unearthing that makes available for the first time the bulk of the 'official' releases - plus a ton of unreleased material - from the mythic Butte County Free Music Society, a collective of musical oddballs, 'noise' musicians, art pranksters, record collectors and rock/roll fans who modeled themselves on the Los Angeles Free Music Society in order to create an umbrella organization that would shelter 'out' musicians during times of musical drought, this one taking place in the ear…
Enlightenment / Phrenesia
Holy Strays follows up his scuzzy debut tape for NNF with two surprisingly lush and undeniably ace electronic trips. The meld of sparse, reverberating drums and plangent psych licks on 'Enlightenment' calls to mind Forest Swords jamming with a lo-fi Raime, on some sweet Hoffman's in a cabin in the Alps, after listening to loads of Amon Duul. Flipsude 'Phrenesia' is a moodier counterpoint, sucking us in with wormholing synthline while blunted programmed beats and a lone rave mistress vocal…
Phonometak Series # 10
This final chapter of the vinyl series puts to close friend/collaborators on two different sides of a split, infact Iriondo and Cantu have been joining their instruments to pay duty in A Short Apnea, Six Minutes War Madness, Uncode Duello, Tasaday and many other projects. Cantu uses guitar, drums, organ, tapes, vocals, electronics and many other things to recreate something that is really close to A Short Apnea. This side is imbued of that Seventies freaky music aura, the second track for…
9
Always well worth picking up, a new edition of the Yeti magazine/journal/compilation CD arrives. As ever, it's full of exclusives too: on the music front the CD includes rare and unreleased material by Woodsist band The Art Museums, US Girls, Ko Melina (of The Dirtbombs), new Captured Tracks band Aias, Teenage Panzercorps, Murder City Devils frontman Spencer Moody, new Mississippi Records artist Marisa Anderson and a selection of mightily obscure vintage cuts - the most notable of which …
All Thumbs
Barcelona Chronicles N°02. Derek Bailey (solo electric guitar). A solo concert filmed in July 2004 on a hot summer afternoon on a rooftop of a private apartment somewhere in the narrow streets of the Ribera district. Directed by Andy Davies. DVD - PAL Format - All Zones - Worldwide Play. Running time 23:03.
Refuse This Gift
The third album Refuse This Gift from Bear Claw is one of two records that ended up being part of a double whammy of releases from Sickroom Records just recently for me. Paired up, at least in my mind, with the excellent Conformists record (which you can find a couple posts below) Bear Claw gives a bit more of a traditional spin on the Chicago math/noise-rock sound compared to their label mates. With their third album Refuse This Gift the band hasn’t deviated all that much from their pr…
Very Friendly #1
Very Friendly is a comic book project that subjectively collects its material from the world of experimental electronic music and will mix stories of an autobiographical nature with historical accounts. In other words; the reader will get a chance to meet some of Sundin's musician friends and colleagues as well as take part of some historical events where a classic recording or performance took place. The first issue of Very Friendly, released in April 2009, presents over 52 pages three main sto…
Pappelallee 5
Andrea NEUMANN: inside piano, mixing desk. Recorded live in Berlin 2008. Ltd. & numbered edition hand made cover on cardboard cover. 'Pappelallee 5 arose by accident during work on a record that required absolute silence in my flat. It was a complicated undertaking, considering that my apartment is located in a house which is mostly occupied with musicians. As a result, I was inspired to place those adversities, from the outset, into the focus of the work and to integrate the sounds of the build…
Chance Meeting (Reissue / Special Edition)
United Jnana is pleased to reissue the debut album from Nurse With Wound, Chance Meeting on a Dissecting Table of a Sewing Machine and an Umbrella, originally released on United Dairies in 1979. This special edition CD features a digipack with the original artwork restored and an expanded booklet with archival material chosen by Steven Stapleton. The disc has been remastered from the original analog tapes and features bonus material. Chance Meeting enjoys a reputation as one of the most singular…
Into An Energy
This is a new release by California's extremely prolific avant-drone duo, Starving Weirdos. These eight new pieces bear all the hallmarks of Starving Weirdos' greatest work: the dizzying mixture of instrumental sounds, electronics, and field recordings, the pointillistic attention to sonic detail, the duo's post-production technique, which achieves something like the aural equivalent of deep-focus photography. On Into An Energy, the duo of Brian Pyle and Merrick McKinlay is joined by occasional …
For Pau Torres
Catalan musician Ferran Fages, known for his guitar work as much as his work with turntables and electronics, delivers here a striking album of evocative, nocturnal electric guitar explorations. Bracketed by two intricate pieces of feedback, the centerpiece of this work maps out a carefully constructed arc of a story, bringing this album closer to that often misunderstood soundtrack-for-a-movie-yet-to-be-filmed genre. Ferran Fages: electric guitar and walkie-talkie. Composed, recorded and mixed …
Silver Bells
New holiday themed single from Moon Duo. Erik and Sanae add more lilt to the season than any combination of egg nog and booze ever will. On the B side the duo wrap a coat around the classic "Goat Head Soup" deep cut "Winter."
Straight outta Bagnolet
Alexandre Bellenger - turntables. Jac Berrocal - vocal, trumpet. François Fuchs - double bass. Dan Warburton - violin. Limited LP (250 copies). 'Jac Berrocal's knowledge of obscure (and not so obscure) French chanson is nothing short of encyclopaedic, as I discovered during the time we spent together touring with Aki Onda a few years ago. My original idea for the Hot Club project (the name of the band, by the way, originates in a joke I had already recorded with Alexandre Bellenger and we…
23 panoramas de fréquences
“23 Frequencies Panoramas - Urban and peri-urban sound-images of Lyon, Saint-Etienne and in between. This record contains about twenty sound images: recordings, or edited recordings, which have been carried out for a few years in Lyon, Saint-Etienne and in betweens. The used recordings have never been distorted or transformed, except a slight filtration when necessary, to reduce some undesirable frequencies, or to reinforce others, which are highly desirable. These sound images deal with …
10 Tears Of Sound
DVD all regions. Celebrating the first 10 years of the festival, this set contains over 11 hours OF audio, a beautiful booklet and a feature length documentary! 20 incredible performances were painstakingly selected by committee from the rich festival history to be shared on one DVD as .wav files (the best way to fit so much high quality audio). The artists featured on this disc are: David Grubbs, Lee Ranaldo + Dean Roberts, Martin Tétreault, Oval, CiNdy (Sam Shalabi + Alexandre St-Onge), Tomas …
Psychic
Like Yeah Yeah Yeahs undergoing a psychotic episode, or Pocahaunted possessed by the spirit of James Brown, Vibes present four tracks of discombobulated funk and wild, outsider punk on this four song long single. The early, chaotic free-associations of Magik Markers would be a good point of reference too, but these guys place more emphasis on low-down bass grooves wah-wah pedal mutations. The cover shots suggest the band are a bit of a spectacle in a live setting, and the rough, brain-a…
Omicron, rho, sigma, tau, upsilon, chi, psi, omega
A certified masterpiece! One monumental box set containing 10 (ten!) unreleased before LPs: an adventurous, spacious and varied oxet blossoming into the label you have known and loved ever since, always on the move; forward, sideways, upwards, backwards. Spread over the 10 LPs, you get the finest selection of rarities and previously-unreleased tracks. Not only that, the package itself is nothing short of excellent, with its newly-designed handmade box, and individual handmade cove…