New Arrivals
The End Of The Empire
Second album for the Brooklyn trio led by guitarist Ninni Morgia (ex White Tornado, ex La Otracina), in this recording with Stuart Popejoy (Bassoon) on bass and Kevin Shea (ex Storm and Stress, Talibam!) on drums. Compared to their first album, that featured Peter Evans on trumpet, “The End of the Empire” is more various and eclectic. The eight tracks open up to psychedelic and ambient music besides free jazz, marked by Ninni Morgia’s visionary guitar, Stuart Popejoy’s pulsating industrial bass …
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…
The Collected Poem For Blind Lemon Jefferson
"Ikef continues to mine the extraordinary musical territory of St. Louis's fervent '60s musical innovators with the reissue of the impossibly rare Collected Poem For Blind Lemon Jefferson. Originally released on the late, brilliant saxophonist Julius Hemphill's artist run Mbari label in 1971, Blind Lemon is a highly energetic, raw and primitive avant-garde take on the Blues Mythos. Hemphill, named 'one of free jazz's most visionary composers' (Chris Kelsey, All Music Guide) is in full form as he…
And Never Ending Nights
Please allow us the pleasure of introducing Axel Willner's Loops Of Your Heart. Hailing from Sweden, the man behind this record alone needs no introduction, as he is already well-known in the electronic music scene for his project The Field. Loops Of Your Heart reflects Axel's experience in Germany, where during his lengthy stays, his mantra-like arpeggiators contributed to the first manifestation of the sound of Cologne Tape, a group that formed while he was staying there. You can also he…
Deep Fried
Now this a strange one. I never would've thought I would be paired with Jaap Blonk... it seems an unlikely combination. But when Tijs van Trigt asked us to perform at his AMPsnacks event in Arnhem, we had such a blast that we decided to do some recording together. This cd is a selection of three hours of improvisation we recorded at STEIM in Amsterdam. Quite a rollercoaster I'd say!
3 : 1
The cracked, pinched, squeaked, and scraped sounds of the twin trumpets of Mazen Kerbaj and Birgit Ulher and the damped, scrubbed, and rasping sounds of Sharif Sehnaoui seem surprisingly familiar these days. Now that so many players have incorporated these techniques into their vocabularies, it allows one to focus on how they‘re used interactively rather than simply as sounds in and of themselves. Kerbaj and Sehnaoui have gained some visibility as core members of a group of free improvisers base…
Spiritual Jazz 2: Europe
As the '60s progressed, cultural and political revolutions occurred both in the U.S. and in Europe. Jazz was both a victim and a savior, with radical developments in the music occurring on both continents. In the U.S., artists took control of their own musical destiny as small labels broke away from the mainstream, expressing new and creative visions of freedom and peace against a backdrop of civil unrest, repression and war. In '60s Europe, the jazz community forged ahead with a different…
Cherlokalate
Effervescent songbird JANE WEAVE unveils a canon of femme-folk, laden with finger picked meandering melodies, ethereal harmonies and wistful leanings. In the same vei as acid folk such as Linda Perhacs and Karen Dalton, this decade spanning collection traces a line between the acid-soaked protest rumblings of yesteryear and the forward/backward facing revivalists of today.
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.
The Revenant Diary
"Don't look back," repeats one of several voices within Mark Van Hoen's The Revenant Diary, his fifth solo album and first release on Editions Mego. Surrounded by weighted beats, analog synthesizer drones and granular dirt, the unidentified, siren-like female voice's advice is as much seduction as warning. Tellingly so, for as well as being both Van Hoen's most ambitious and his most accessible work, The Revenant Diary is an eloquent meditation on the allures and dangers of memory, regret …
La Maieutique De La Quantique
All new Ilitch studio recording! An horrific grandchild springs from the magma: Ilitch'll itch your progadelic scratch with its well manicured talons of fire. This Ilitchian renaissance zigs deep space experimental and zags full metal Zuehl. Electronics chirp and howl like the opening coda of Susperia, then explode into Weidorje intensity fuzz violence, cheered on by a pecussive force that sounds like Mussolini being kicked to death. The shifting interplay between total rockers and extrat…
Black Box: Torture Garden/Leng Tch\'e
"The controversial and influential Naked City Black Box couples two of Zorn's most extreme and violent creations. Torture Garden (1991) presents Naked City's intense and groundbreaking music combining free jazz, bebop, r&b, country, funk, rockabilly, surf, metal and grindcore—usually in the same song! The rare, seldom heard Leng Tch'e (1992), released only in Japan and long out-of-print features Naked City in an agonizingly slow, brutal 32-minute assault. This special 20th anniversary ed…
The invisible city
Recorded and mixed during 2008-2009 in Berlin. All tracks composed by BJNilsen using tape recorders, computer, organ, acoustic guitar, electronics, viola, subharchord. Field recordings from Sweden, Iceland, Norway, UK, Japan, Portugal and Germany. The subharchord was recorded in the EAM Studio @ Adk, Berlin. Viola played by Hildur Gudnadottir. Mastered by Denis Blackham at Skye.
Mind Ctrl: Psychic
A new label (The Fader) brings a deluxification of 2009's Psychic Chasms, which now also contains the bonus album Mind Ctrl: Psychic Chasms Possessed, featuring nine exclusive remixes and cover versions by Toro y Moi, Body Language, Javelin, Bibio, Yacht, Darby Cicci of The Antlers, Twin Shadow, Dntel, and Anoraak!An elusive new project from composer Alan Palomo, Neon Indian delivers equal parts synthetic nostalgia, dream-pop lullabies, and grinding guitar noise to create something eerier t…
Daydreaming
Debut album by Seattle's Rafael Anton Irisarri, released in 2007 on Deaf Center's Miasmah label. A splendid but pitch black album based on long piano melodies, distant drones and even more distant glitches, "Daydreaming" is a particularely sad and introvert CD, which takes the most emotional and melancholic side of the other Miasmah releases, but expresses them in a very direct and stripped down way. Splendid.
Of The Body Prone
Mixing improvisation & tightly controlled jump cut compositional complexity, AHLEUCHATISTAS are one of a handful of rock groups that can give the Ruins, Meshuggah, & Naked City a run for their money. Fascinating & powerful, passionately performed & beautifully recorded, this is New Rock Complexity at its very best.
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…
Creakiness and other misdemeanours
'Creakiness and other misdemeanours collects the long out of print 'Creakiness' lp as well as various other very limited releases. 'Sand Tangled Women' was released as a limited edition 7' by Klanggalerie. 'Little Dipper Minus Two (Echo poeme sequence 1)' was a CDR limited to 200 copies. 'A Perfectly Natural Explanation' was released on a limited edition 7'. New artwork by Babs Santini.'
Trouble In Paradise
Phantom Orchard, the duo of Zeena Parkins and Ikue Mori, is expanded with 5 performers representing some of the most exciting women in modern creative experimental music, releasing a surprising, riveting, and amazing album.Members of bands as diverse as DNA, Skeleton Crew, Electric Masada, Hemophiliac and Björk, Zeena and Ikue have been leading figures of the downtown scene since the early 1980s. Their fabulous duo project Phantom Orchard is expanded here with five of the most exciting and creat…