New Arrivals
The Carrier Frequency
Frozen in time over four decades this 1984 "cyclic incantation" combines electroacoustics, grazed euphoria, industrial aesthetics, sampled salvage, and recycled mechanic folk to score a widely revered dystopian physical theatre performance from the UK's hugely influential Impact Theatre Co-Operative. From a seminal post-punk art-action faction (formed in a Leeds warehouse space alongside Gang Of Four and The Mekons), this apocalyptic prophecy not only cracked avant-garde stage boundaries but pro…
Cuspa Llullu
* Edition of 300 * For its second collaboration release, Daniel Menche & Anla Courtis go further and deeper into their previous steps. “Cuspa Llullu” is an intense journey through a kaleidoscopic sound labyrinth which seems to come from nowhere/everywhere.
Side A moves into metallic corridors with multi-layered surfaces which keep changing until its last second. Side B begins outdoors but somehow it soon starts visiting several inner regions until it reaches its final climax. But what is exactly…
The Age Of Space
* Edition of 200 * Joel Gilardini is an experimental guitarist and sound designer, based in Zurich (Switzerland). His solo ambient oriented works are often based on the use of live‐looping and instant composition techniques. It’s a very unique biosphere of ambient, drone, dub, doom elements and morphing soundscapes. Joel Gilardini opens at Montags for Nik Bärtsch’s Ronin/Mobile on regular basis at Exil club (Zurich/CH), and has taken part to Y2K International Live-Looping festivals in Zurich, Pa…
Magari
* Edition of 300 * Master synthesists Colin Potter (NWW), Alessio Natalizia (Not Waving), and Guido Zen reprise their supergroup for Ecstatic with a seductively serpentine follow-up to their superb debut from a couple of years ago.
PNZ’s pulsing, twanging, expansive ‘Magari’ was recorded between 2018-2020 in the slipstream of ’Shut Your Eyes On The Way Out’, which is surely one of the strongest new kosmiche-related albums of recent years. Where that album refreshed classic styles of European syn…
12 Instrumenter Til Henning
12 instrumenter til Henning (english: 12 instruments for Henning) is a new arrangement by Danish composer Anders Lauge Meldgaard (formerly known as Frisk Frugt) that sees Meldgaard exploring the music of Danish avant-garde artist and composer Henning Christiansen. A trio piece by Christiansen from 1975 is the source material for a bright and stimulating new work for extended chamber ensemble, with the tonal language the original blossoming outwards via Meldgaard’s own brilliantly colourful sound…
Muster Point
US sax player Stanley J. Zappa and Finnish drummer Simo Laihonen come together on the new album "Muster Point" on We Jazz Records, August 7. The two students of Milford Graves add bassist Ville Rauhala on a couple of tracks to make a bold and adventurous album captured both live and in the studio while Zappa was touring in Finland with the Black Motor musicians. This is a set full of fire and thunder, but also features some more meditative spiritual jazz. RIYL: Milford Graves, ESP-Disk', spiritu…
400 Miles from L.A. 1955-56
*2020 stock * Phoenix, Arizona 1955…a twenty-five year old disc jockey and fledgling songwriter, Lee Hazlewood, is trying to break into the music industry. He takes Greyhound bus trips to Los Angeles to pitch songs, only to be rejected each time. Undeterred, Lee starts a record label called Viv Records. Running the label out of his house, Lee finds the artists, writes the songs, produces the sessions, arranges the pressings of the records and handles distribution. Recently discovered tapes in th…
Commissions: 1977-2000
Makoto Inoue and Yasushi Yamashita’s Inoyama Land project spans nearly four decades, still active to this day. A portmanteau of their family names, the “Land” of Inoyama hovers between imagined mythical space and concrete reality, extending beyond physical releases into installations, site-specific sound design and theatre scores.
After their famed Haruomi Hosono-produced 1983 release Danzindan-Pojidon, the duo became involved in the budding environmental music business that was taking shape in …
I'll Remember
LP version. Tip-on sleeve. For every celebrated name in jazz, soul and related music, there are probably another 1000 musicians who had all the talent and potential but for whom widespread recognition remained elusive. Roscoe Weathers is one such figure, a jazzman who earned his chops the hard way, a sideman in smoky clubs from Memphis to Seattle, before finally settling in LA. He recorded a significant amount of music through the 1960s, but never found the slightest modicum of commercial acclai…
Return To Monster Planet
A sequel to the cult 1975 Australian space rock album Monster Planet. In 2013 The Roundtable curated a dedicated program redocumenting the music of Australia’s legendary space rock band Cybotron. A new generation of electronic music enthusiasts and krautrock fans alike had been introduced or had perhaps been reconnected to the unlikely yet incredible sounds of Australia’s unique brand of ‘kosmische musik’. This archival series included Steve Maxwell Von Braund’s groundbreaking solo album Monster…
Overgrowth
* Edition of 200 * Overgrowth: We consider technology as a tool at our disposal, while it has become the environment around us and takes only care of efficiency.
So, nowadays, the technical apparatus became more important than men and their needs.
It has no purpose, or a vision for a better mankind future. It only "works".
In Between
* Edition of 200 * The shaman, the witch and the artist are three different figures, united by the desire for transcendence. Overcoming the material contingencies of one's context through the magic-creative gesture, which makes the will real, is their ultimate goal. The shaman, inducing the trance, seeks contact with the higher entities.
Through the ritual, the witch intends to bend nature to man. The artist, through his work, creates allusions, images, hints of worlds hidden outside and inside …
The Unasked Answer
In 1908, Charles Ives wrote a work called “The Unanswered Question”. It was for the unusual instrumentation of offstage string ensemble, woodwind quartet and, most significant for our purposes here, solo trumpet. Though it was inspired, we think, by Ralph Waldo Emerson’s poem “The Sphinx”, Ives provided his own explanatory text. The trumpet asks “The Perennial Question of Existence” seven times, to which the woodwinds provide only six increasingly disordered answers, while the strings, heard at …
Imagined Commonities: Live At La Cave 12, Genève
FEN is an improvised music quartet. Comprising Otomo Yoshihide (Japan), Yuen Chee Wai (Singapore), Yan Jun (China) and Ryu Hankil (Korea), it was formed in 2008 in Marseille.
The initial intent of forming FEN was not based on a particular pursuit of any specific form of musical aesthetic, but rather to develop and deepen the improvised music networks of Asia. This desire was furthered by these 4 individuals, each with their individual endeavours to organise music-related activities and bridge co…
Summing
Oscar Jan Hoogland is the sound of Amsterdam in person. He plays in the Muziekgebouw (Amsterdams main hall for modern composed music) as well as in the Bimhuis (Holland’s main jazz venue) that is literally attached to it, as in its parking garage. He is an instant composer, pianist and inventor of his own instrument by putting a clavichord, a keyboard instrument from the 17th century, on 220 Volt electricity.
As the last student of the late pianist, composer and improvisor Misha Mengelberg he te…
Yes Yes No No Yes No Yes
Officer! was founded by Londoner Mick Hobbs. His roots were in the Rock In Opposition scene of the late 70s and early 80s. Initially he worked as guitarist in The Work, subsequently he became closely associated with This Heat and their Cold Storage Studio in Brixton, working with artists like FamilyFodder, Catherine Jauniaux or Zeena Parkins.
The band's first album "8 New Songs By Mick Hobbs" came out in 1982 on casette only. It was followed by the second album, "Ossification". The third album, …
S.O.T.A.
*Limited edition of 100 hand-numbered copies, issued in a digipack.* Non Toxique Lost are one of the most important and equally most underrated bands from Berlin's 1980s Industrlal scene. Sprung aus den Wolken, Einstürzende Neubauten, Die Tödliche Doris and also Non Toxique Lost were the core of the movement in the divided city. In the old days, most of their albums came out on cassette only, later they were collected onto vinyls and CDs.
After the tragic loss of long-time member Steffen Schütze…
Khamu (She Sleep Walks)
Second installment in a reissue programme for this excellent UK band. C Cat Trance were formed by multi instrumentalist John Rees Lewis after his departure from Medium Medium, taking the band's drummer Nigel Kingston Stone with him. The band are seen as members of the post-punk movement, but that's not all that is to say about their sound.
C Cat Trance incorporated ethnic music into their compositions before world music became a popular genre. Their influences come mainly from Northern Africa an…
Antiphonen
Sainkho Namtchylak is a singer originally from Tuva, an autonomous republic in the Russian Federation just north of Mongolia. She is known for her Tuvan throat singing or Khöömei. Her music encompasses avant-jazz, electronica, modern composition and Tuvan influences. Once the Soviet Union had collapsed, she moved to Vienna, making it her base, although she traveled widely, working in any number of shifting groups and recording a number of discs that revolved around free improvisation. Amongst th…
Das Testament
Amazing remix album by the Czech Opening Performance Orchestra. Opening Performance Orchestra using the very noisy Das Testament from 1983 by M.B. are able to make an even more abrasive and challenging work than the original. Possibly one of the best M.B. remix album we have listened to in a long time. Very Recommended! Edition of 200 copies in digipack with 8 pages booklet with text in Italian, Czech and English.