New Arrivals

Recording of the sound sculpture in the Polish Pavilion at 13th International Architecture Exhibition in Venice. Sound sculpture by Katarzyna Krakowiak. Sound design by Ralf Meinz. Voices by Ulrike Helmholz and Sabina Meyer. Recorded, edited, mixed and mastered by by Ralf Meinz. 32-page booklet.'Architectural Biennale sound sculpture amplifying the entire building of the Polish Pavilion turned into a flat CD ? Will you say it completely misses the point? Brings the real space into a stereo syst…

Luigi Archetti und Michael Heisch spent over two years experimenting in the studio. The result is the album the "Netherlandish Proverbs" – a musical approach to the painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1525 – 1569). Conceived by a process of random selection, the album presents the listener with freshly perceptible, kaleidoscopic-like audio experiences."The Netherlandish Proverbs" is one of Pieter Bruegel the Elder's best known paintings. It contains over 100 sayings and idioms illustrating hum…

'Japanese percussionist Seijiro Murayama has been working in France since 1999. His musical approach is based on extreme attention to the performance space, the energy of the audience and the quality of silence. He is interested in how continuous sounds and microscopic events can delicately revitalize the environment. Now established in Beirut (Lebanon), french saxophonist Stéphane Rives has spent over last ten years developing new sonic array of extended techniques on the soprano. On thi…

Thomas Rehnert lives and works in Berlin. He was deeply influenced by the European free jazz of the 1970s, and in West Berlin in the 1980s he played percussion in various punk bands. In the world of punk and experimental music of these years, he began to occupy himself with electro-acoustic music, machine music and automata. He builds sound machines from analogue modular synthesizer systems that are voltage- controlled and steer themselves.His formative principle of organization is variation by …

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…

Philippe Petit is interested in soundtracks; even if he creates original music he'd rather be introduced as a "musical travel agent" than a composer. Petit uses a Cymbalum, an Electric Psalterion, computer and synths to build up electronic layers, process acoustic and field recordings.
To second the machines he likes to move various glasses, 
or percussive objects, and take advantage of vinyl material to fondle released sounds. A journalist for various magazines and radio as well as a musical ac…

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…

Primordial Undermind's second full-length blast of psychedelic freakout guitar bliss evolves the sonics found on their critically-acclaimed September Gurls debut into freer, more expansive territory, while retaining plenty of the finely-honed song craft familiar to those lucky enough to have grabbed any of their unfailingly excellent singles. Long modal excursions into the heart of free guitar darkness like "Device", "Turning of the Worm" and "Persistence of Trinity", are counterbalanced by defi…

Originally released in 1981 as an untitled mini album on Zick Zack, "Dub & Die" completes our re-issue programme of the band's earliest works. Recorded at SADW's Cassettencombinat studio in Berlin, the original 8 tracks represent the first release by this German Avantgarde/Industrial group that was once a member of the "Geniale Dilettanten" movement. Again, comparison with early Einstürzende Neubauten is permitted, altho…

Just arrived! The research-performance group kiva was created in 1975 by the American trombonist John Silber and the French percussionist Jean-Charles François as part of a research project at the Center for Music Experiment at the University of California San Diego. During the period of its existence (1975-91) various members (often graduate students from UCSD) joined the two permanent musicians, John Silber and Jean-Charles François, to contribute to the groups artistic production. Two persona…

2012 release ** The most recent solo incarnation of pioneer Campbell Kneale (Birchville Cat Motel, Black Boned Angel, et al.), this is the definitive OLWDTW release spanning two discs. Crowning achievement in a prolific and highly collectable catalog. Solo project of Campbell Kneale, formerly Birchville Cat Motel, and one-half of Black Boned Angel. Packaged in an oversized 5.5" square folder with two art inserts and music spanning two discs, each in an envelope.

This amazing CD contains some of the great works for solo percussion by the authorities in the field of contemporary music. The performances and recording quality are both superb! Clearly all care and effort went into the recording and text however, the dual layered dvd /cd is in PAL format, and will require said player or a media transfer to see the studio footage and interview with Xenikas. Considering we spend much time searching for the "right music" to add to our collection, this disc…

The Modern Sound Quintet were formed in Stockholm by Trinidadian steel drum master Rudy Smith. On Otinku, Smith wails out on his set of 'pans' (as I believe the vernacular goes) in an improbably slick bebop mode, accompanied by a rhythm section capable of keeping it free and swinging one moment, and then within an instant locking down a groove. While pieces like the title track and 'Bye Bye Blackbird' flow effortlessly, 'Mercy, Mercy, Mercy' and 'Memphis Underground' lay down a solid bedrock of …

Para Pacem Para Bellum” is the first CD release with the great music of Svyatoslav Lunyov's. That serious, highly emotional and spiritual work is the result of two general methods of creating music: academic tradition (scores, acoustic instruments and playing of the real musicians) and the contemporary/experimental way (generating, synthesis, editing with computer tools). Needs to say that this electro-acoustic work combines the well-known traditional elements of the Requiem, Passions and the Ma…

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 …

A revelatory debut album by a 64 year old pianist/composer may beg the question: where has Carei Thomas been all this time? Born in a culturally diverse neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Thomas cut his musical teeth in Chicago during a particularly fertile period for that city: gigging with Sun Ra as an improvising vocalist in 1959-60, joining up with the AACM for one hot minute in 1966, co-founding a group called The L…

A dark, choking, psychotropic immersion into abstract isolationist electronics, floating among rumbles, drones, bleeps, glitches...like a trip into the deepest corners of an obscure unknown galaxy, lost forever and glad of it! Everything is made with exclusive use of vintage equipment, no computers, no midi, no emulators…nothing can beat the sound of an unleashed vintage analogue synthesizer

Marcus Schmickler's new release following his acclaimed Altars Of Science (EMEGO 082CD) is a must-have for those interested in the rising field of contemporary computer music. It reconfirms Schmickler's interest in the liaison of sound, phenomenology and cognitive sciences. Schmickler, therefore, utilizes a new interpretation of 1960's discovery, the Shepardtone, discovered by Roger Shepard, which creates the auditory illusion of a tone that continually rises or descends in pitch yet ultimately …

The piece “Radio-Imitat (Radio Imitation)” by the German artists and musicians collective Insitut fuer Feinmotorik was produced in 2009 for the monthly radio show “Radio Arthur” on Radio LoRa. In addition to its reconstruction of advertising, music and jingles, imaginative room is also made available for talk and discussion. A facsimile of radio is thus painstakingly manufactured, as if by someone who for cared very much less for sense and signification than they did for the weird flow of sound …

RESTOCKED!! Limited to 300 copies only "We haven't heard from New Zealand dronescaper Peter Wright in about a year. Well, it's been at least that long since we've reviewed one of his discs. Somehow two other Wright discs slipped through the cracks in that time though, which is a shame, since pretty much everything we've heard from Wright is fantastic. This latest double disc is no different Nine looooooong tracks spread out over two discs, most in the 15-20 minute range, which is ideal for Wrigh…

Since the very first notes, this music appears to be about memory, decay and subversion. It is a deep investigation on the ability of sounds to freely attract or reject each other, in accordance with their own nature and disposition, and still maintain their meaning. Combining dense, multilayered sheets of synthetic sounds, treated bass, electronic percussion, the six tracks reveal their non-architectural principle as the music develops through warm textural details, reverberations, underlying m…

Sound and video artist MPLD works in a world of sentiment and detachment, creating a Lost & Found aesthetic uniquely his own. Lost are the old Kodachrome slides which make up the foundation of his work. Found are the feelings of misplaced memories the slides conjure, as well as the sounds — processed and amplified — of the projectors that bring those images back to life. What’s seen on lacunae is a straight shot of the screen during a rehearsal for a concert, although that might not be clear to …

Surface Tension Supplément N°4. 'Organized as a temporary working group, the Manual project set out to explore sound and auditory experience as platforms for social meeting, urban intervention and environmental investigation. Developed in collaboration with Atelier Nord and the Ultima festival and staged in Oslo in 2009, the project brought together six artists from around Europe engaged in experimental media practices. The project functioned as a series of process-oriented field studies of the …