New Arrivals
Monopiece & Jaap Blonk
"The improvising trio Monopiece lists its instrumentation as guitar, percussion, and electronics, but electronics describes far more than one third of its texture, since both guitar and percussion are amplified and electronically processed. On this release they are joined by the Dutch vocal artist Jaap Blonk in recording spontaneously generated music, edited and subtly processed to reflect the communal nature of its creation without interrupting the strong, improvised narratives of each piece.In…
Fela Ransome Kuti and his Koola Lobitos
**Clear vinyl edition** Before Afrobeat, there was Highlife-Jazz and Afro-Soul. Highlife music, originally from Ghana and widely popular across West Africa, dominated the music scene in Lagos when Fela Kuti returned to the newly independent Nigeria in 1963. Fela had been studying trumpet at Trinity College of Music in London where he met drummer Tony Allen, who also joined him in new group Koola Lobitos as they sought to mix things up by introducing the sounds they had heard in the capital's jaz…
Duets
**2019 stock** "This December 1976 recording features two of the most prominent AACM musicians, Roscoe Mitchell and Anthony Braxton. Mitchell’s compositions run the gamut, beginning with the darkly gorgeous opener that features Braxton’s contrabass clarinet nestling evocatively beneath the composer’s earthy flute… Mitchell’s other pieces investigate the sparer, more abstract realm, as the duo’s wide variety of reeds populate the sonic environment with scattered moans, squeaks and pops. Overall, …
Last Night
**2019 stock** Having recently contributed to Goner’s Yogascum LP, reissued in late 2017 as a vinyl release through Hallow Ground, Mark Godwin now returns to the label together with his musical partner Gareth Ormerod as zK. Formed in 1999 as a live project, zK first released on the legendary Mancunian Skam label in 2003, toured throughout Europe and were invited by Autechre to play the All Tomorrow’s Parties festival.In the following years, Godwin and Ormerod produced a slew of records that at o…
The Gorilla Variations
This is the first full-length collaborative release by Richmond, VA-based musician and sound artists Molly Berg and Stephen Vitiello. The CD title, The Gorilla Variations came about from a request for a short-soundtrack from Éder Santos, a Brazilian video artist who Vitiello has worked with for 20-years on an uncounted number of projects. For Santos’ recent video installation, Boxing The Game, Éder asked for a 3-minute soundtrack to accompany a video portrait of Idi Amin, a lonely gorilla housed…
Don't Believe It's Over
Mannequin Records is elated to present a rare lost demo tape recording of Caroline K - real name Caroline Kaye Walters - founder member of Nocturnal Emissions, one of the best UK experimental / industrial music groups in the 1980s. When we asked Nigel Ayers about the possibility to press a small batch of the edit made by Mannequin Records's head Alessandro Adriani, we would never expect to find more material from her solo productions. The only production of Caroline available is in fact her LP N…
Aunka Ma Kwacha
"There is music that falls right into place, a perfectly articulated expression of a few distinct influences. Then, there is another kind of median music, something more mysterious, the result of time, place, technology, and alchemy. Zambian writer and musician Smokey Haangala’s Aunka Ma Kwacha (The Money is Gone) released in 1976 is an example of this more mystical metallurgy, falling somewhere between psychedelic Zamrock, US folk, Kalindula, and Sundown Beat (music played after dark) from Tong…
19 Years Before the Beginning
**600 copies** “Sometimes our own creations surprised us,” says Inguna Rubene, flute player, guitarist, bassoonist and songwriter for 19 Gadi Pirms Sākuma (19 Years Before the Beginning). Created with the idea of lasting for a single performance, 19 Gadi Pirms Sākuma developed into one of the most delicate, intriguing groups in Latvia’s 1980s and early 1990s music scene. Formed in 1988, the band arrived at a time when the Soviet Union was showing the first signs of unravelling. Latvia remained a…
Epistasis
Following the success of her 2018 solo debut album Kontrapoetik (PRTLS 017LP), the Swedish composer Maria W Horn returns with Epistasis, her most ambitious record to date. The title track, "Konvektion" and the two parts of "Interlocked Cycles" see the XKatedral co-founder explore radical approaches to composition that combine avant-garde methods with electronic means. While Kontrapoetik highlighted Horn's strength as a conceptual and political artist, Epistasis is to be understood as an advanced…
The Moomins - Limited Xmas Sleeve
**500 copies - Limited Xmas sleeve** Imagine, if you will, a foreboding homemade electro-acoustic, new age, synth-driven, proto-techno, imaginary world music created on a Portastudio soundtrack for a Polish-made animated fantasy based on a Finnish modern folk tale and created for German and Austrian TV, composed in 1982 by two politically-driven post-punk theater performers from a shared house in Leeds. To even the most perspicacious and adventurous of alternative music fans, the genuine bloodli…
Woodland Band (Parade)
**500 copies** Just when you though it was safe to return to the Groke’s cave, Finders Keepers interrupt Moomin hibernation season to excavate some unexpected buried treasure from Tove’s trove via the cassette vaults of Graeme Miller and Steve Shill. Returning to our much loved stitched-felt format this new limited 7” single not only finds a home for an unaired extended version of 1983’s Woodland Band procession but introduces the first of a series of totally unused Moomin themes taken from priv…
Schattenspieler
**300 copies, purple vinyl** In 2010, Swedish composer and multimedia artist Marcus Fjellström's debut Miasmah release followed two critically acclaimed full length albums on Lampse (2006's Gebrauchsmusik and 2005's Exercises In Estrangement). In addition Marcus has had several commissioned works requested, leading to him working with, among others, the Swedish Royal Ballet, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, numerous ensembles, soloists and filmmakers including Salad Fingers creator David Firth. F…
IsoMonads
Killer. edition of 50 copies. “For every un-universe, then, an un-philosophy that must also negate itself.” ― Eugene Thacker - Jarra’s artistic exploration started with painting abstract artworks in which he aimed to minimise his part as a painter. The technical approach, craftsmanship and the concentration devoted to this process should define the artwork in its final state. Jarra’s perspective on sound has been in a similar way when he started with field recordings in the late '90s. He consequ…
The Master Speaks Thrice
**175 copies** Dark and demanding improvisation, each side of this album is an extended foray into dark and dangerous explorations from the Los Angeles trio of Peter Kolovos on guitar, Patrick Shiroishi on saxophone, and Noel Meek on electronics and tapes. Shiroishi's sweeping tones matching the electronics and effected guitar in a glorious nightmare of darkly imaginative sound.
The Gardens of Beastley Manor
A one-off release from Bob Drake of extraordinary instrumental compositions, through-composed and performed by a massed orchestra of Bob on piano, 5-string resonator banjo, Farfisa organ, Korg MS20 synthesiser, electric and acoustic guitars, recorders, drums, bass, chromatic hand-bells, trombone, trumpet and violin.22 exquisite, enigmatic and compressed vignettes that defy comparison, even with himself – it’s a new departure for Bob, though the mixture of complexity, simplicity, virtuosity and d…
Sex and Dead Cities
Sardinian hinterland is something else in comparison to the idyllic postcards of the high bathing season. It is something else also from what you see in the folklore documentaries about the Sardinian traditional masks. The land is bleak, made of stones and basaltic boulders, the landscape is fractured, broke up. Cities like Macomer, where Hermetic Brotherhood of Lux-Or lives, are agglomerations of concrete barracks, rough roads, closed factories, industrial and commercial decadence. Only local…
Ecolalia
Vivien Le Fay is a multi-disciplinary artist who mixes her sociology studies, her classes with Alejandro Jodorowski, dance and photography classes until the traces of the different expressive styles are lost in her personal path. Her interest in music started with orthodox new wave, passing through the physicality of hardcore until the discovery of the latest generation of electronic sound designers. She started working as a guitar technician for noise bands while deepening her knowledge of the …
Indtil Døden Udfrier Mig
Ung Dansk Kunst’s Tapeserie [Young Danish Art’s Tape Series] from 1969 is a series of 10 tape works, created by a central group of visual artists of the 1960es' experimental Danish art scene. The tape series is one of the earliest Danish examples of visual artists creating works of art in sound. Sound works that were conceptually, self-consciously and explicitly something other than music. The tapes could be purchased by mail order, and were initially limited to 20-30 copies each. Nørgaard’s wor…
Things Opening
Second Editions presents Things Opening by Lori Goldston. Lori Goldston's approach to the violincello is true and immediate. Describing herself as "classically trained and rigorously de-trained", Goldston indeed defies all conformities of genre, style and technique. Her playing reflects as much of Baroque as it does of American roots or experimental traditions. It is elegant, gritty, restless, delicate, irreverent, utterly pure. This album comprises of two parts, highlighting Goldston as both a…
Boskage
**300 copies** "The modus operandi of more than a few of the recent New Wave of Jazz releases is sparse free improvisation using extended techniques. These albums, often disjointed with abrupt transitions and long minimalistic passages, exhibit a surprisingly consistent approach despite their aleatoric nature – a commitment to the unpredictable. Enter acoustic guitarist Daniel Thompson and saxophonist Colin Webster, both experienced improvisers who team up on the three tracks of Boskage. This pa…