New Arrivals
Beyond utopia
2012. English edition, 18,5 x 24 cm (softcover), 126 pages (b/w ill.). Edited by Sophie Warren and Jonathan Mosley. Contributions by Maria Fusco, Marie-Anne McQuay, Paul O'Neill, Elizabeth Price, Jane Rendell, Lee Stickells, Robin Wilson. Based on a project initiated by the collaborative practice of Sophie Warren and Jonathan Mosley with writer Robin Wilson, Beyond Utopia queries the function of utopian thinking in urban planning and spatial culture. The aim of the original project was to…
Anyway Your Children Will Deny It
After excellent reviews and endless touring all over the world, supporting bands like Deerhoof, Xiu Xiu and Sic Alps, the Italian weirdos Father Murphy are back with a brand new album titled “Anyway your children will deny it”. It is the latest, boldest installation of an ongoing series of albums investigating the band’s favorite themes: life, death, love, religion and even more death. For this album, the Italian trio comprised of Reverend Freddie (vocals, guitar), Chiara Lee (vocals, keyboards,…
Musics In The Margin Vol.4
Fourth opus of musical art brut, faithful to our precepts, we search out self-taught musicians. That means people who make contemporary music outside the customary production and distribution channels and with the determination and creative gifts that stem from unmistakable artistic talent. Some of these musicians operate in mental or social isolation and make their music in special workshops while others can be classified with the spiritualist or visionary artists. This particular relationship …
Soundtracks for bride of sevenless
A survey of Asian sound activity: 1997 - 1998 1 Koji Tano Field Recording Intro (1:16) 2 Government Alpha Acoustic Type (0:48) 3 Chris C. Lin Bathyal (2:55) 4 Ching Shen Ching* V-Zone (7:25) 5 Magmax Gracie Jugend (5:33) 6 S.Isabella Phosphorescence (4:36) 7 Z.S.L.O. 422189 (4:36) 8 R.H.Y. Yau Dog (1:13) 9 MSBR Fragment #1 (5:10) 10 Kazumoto Endo Night Falls On IKEBUKURO (4:17) 11 PNF My Favorite Scratch (7:58) 12 Yukiko Toyama Park 3AM (5:55)
The geographers
"It's a generalisation, but Sylvia Hallett scrapes and Clive Bell blows. Bell specialises in reed or pipe instruments from exotic locations, principally South East Asia. Hallett bought a saw for £2.49, mounted a bicycle wheel on a spindle and also plays the more frequently-sighted viola. Bell studied the shakuhachi flute in Tokyo, then lived in Thailand, where he familiarised himself with the brittle vibrations of the khene reed-pipes. This was the beginning of his love for blown instruments tha…
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…
Homunculus
Debut disc from the new collaborative project between Nathan Bowles (Black Twig Pickers/Spiral Joy Band) and Lisa Cameron (Venison Whirled). A real odd one this, lots of rattling and scraping of percussive objects creating 3 tracks of abstract improvised surreal sonic explorations. The sound is matched by what I can only describe as the weirdest sleeves I have every had the joy of releasing (and we've had some weird ones), but this one is far out, the guy at my local print shop looked baffled wh…
Stasis
Zbeen is an electro-acoustic project by Gianluca Favaron and Ennio Mazzon. Zbeen’s improvisational approach is developed from the human-machine paradigm which is represented by the interaction with digital instruments specifically designed and developed for this project. K-Frame, Zbeen's debut EP, was released by Ripples in January 2012. Unlike K-Frame, which was developed as a sonic counter-part to the linear algebra concept of an ordered set of ‘k’ linearly-independent vectors, Stasis elabo…
Somewhere Out There
Luca Di Mattei is one of the Afe resident artists since the early days of the label. During the years he had several releases under four different aliases: Leeza, Hendy Van Morris, Jabba and Bill Catez. Leeza is his most well-known and prolific incarnation. Generated using laptop computer technology, Leeza's music has its main roots in what was once called Intelligent Techno, and is clearly inspired by the great records published during the '90s by labels such as Warp, Rephlex, Skam, etc.After t…
Danza de la Vida
The follow-up to our "Danza de la Muerte" compilation focuses on the more song orientated Syntactic releases. Also, you will find tracks that were planned as Syntactic or Klanggalerie 7"s, but never made it onto vinyl. The track list reads as follows: Andrew Liles - In this vegetable Glass of Nature Le Zappalot (Rehberg/Bauer/Birnbach) - Erika goes to Leopoldau O Yuki Conjugate - Madal (Circular…
Port Out Starboard Home
Some bands produce a CD every week; by now it seems 'normal' to have three year gaps in releasing records for Beequeen, which is a fresh antidote to the music business of more = more. For Beequeen, like good wine, things mature given more time. Whereas 'Sandancing' (2008) featured Olga Wallis a guest singer, on this new album she's a fully fledged bandmember, adding her beautiful voice to Beequeen's off beat songs. 'Port Out Starboard Home' features surreal dream-pop, but always with that unique…
Lassie House / Jumble Massive
This CD compiles two long out of print, obscure vinyls by People Like Us. Almost all (maybe all) were recorded as commisions for Dutch radio. People Like Us plunders her way through the wastelands of vinyl nobody buys, collages them into mostly strange, and at times funny pieces of music. Unlike other plunderphonics, People Like Us keep the voice/spoken word segments to a minimum, which I most hearthly welcome. Extensive spoken words are usually hilarious, but after repeated listening don't hold…
Dead Space
Blip is a duo collaboration between Jim Denley and Mike Majkowski: two of Australia's most prominent improvising musicians. They began playing together in 2002, as members of The Splinter Orchestra, and formed Blip in 2009. They have been developing their own approach to the woodwinds/strings duo arrangement, deconstructing and reconstructing this format. Blip music focuses on duration, the subtleties of sound, the pitch within timbre and texture, as well as pulse. Wi
Folk Roots, New Routes
Reissued on Fledg'ling in 2005, originally released in 1965 by Decca. An experimental recording conceived by Austin John Marshall bringing together Shirley's haunting traditional song with Davy's guitar improvisations. Folk Roots, New Routes opened the door for Fairport Convention's Liege and Lief and Pentangle's debut. For this carefully remastered edition, Fledg'ling have restored the original artwork, added a new sleeve-note essay as well as previously unpublished photographs.
Sol Sketches
Film director Chris Teerink asked me to make the soundtrack for a documentary he would be making about American artist Sol LeWitt. This was in 2009. Chris and I agreed that the music and the images should both be equally important in his film. We didn't want the score to overpower the images, but neither did we want it to become solely background 'muzak'. I searched for a certain openness in the sound, while at the same time keeping a directness to it. Musical references for me were the piano pi…
Beam Stone
Per Anders Nilsson (computer and synthesizer), Sten Sandell (piano, prepared piano, electronics and voice) & Raymond Strid (percussion). Beam Stone was founded a year before this October 2007 recording. The trio consists of three free improvisers, each with a distinctive personal sound. Their aim with Beam Stone is to explore sonic territories with the guidance of different pre-defined concepts. Listening and sonic exploration are considered the essential points of departure.
The theory of impossible melody
Jody Diamond, Chris Mann, voice; Phil Burk and Larry Polansky, live computers; Larry Polansky, fretless electric guitars; Robin Hayward, tubas. Among the lineages of knowledge that Larry Polansky (b. 1954) has woven together in his creative work, as both a composer and theorist, have been mathematics, intonation theory, cybernetics, systems theory, artificial intelligence, musicology (both Western and non-Western), American Sign Language, and Jewish mysticism. He has combined these and many othe…
Seamstress In A Suitcase
Tan or Boil – a pun on the name of bratty short stop from those 1970s Bad News Bears films that stuck – is the alias of the Pittsburgh-born Jason Bacasa. After growing up in Pittsburgh and studying graphic design, Jason took flight from his home town to work freelance in a variety of cities, though his latest and current stint in New York seems more permanent than those in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Chicago. On the songwriting side, Jason’s continual travels kept him to just an acoustic guit…
The source
“A 4000 year old rock band" W. S. Burroughs. Recognised internationally, Jajouka goes back up to the late Rolling Stone Brian Jones, across his collaboration of 1968, but also to Paul Bowles, Brion Gysin, and William S.Burroughs which had already established their residences for some years together with these musicians of the mountains of Rif. "The Source" is the new record of The "true" Master Musicians of Jajouka and it goes back to the origins of their sacred music. Bachir Attar, last …
Tourbillon D'Obscurité
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…