New Arrivals
Cod War Kids
A deep and delicate dive into the psyche of an unusual duo, British-born ex-pat North Carolinian guitarist Dan Melchior & Icelandic-born Hanover-based experimentalist Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson. Each quite unique on their own accord, but in combination bring a sound reminiscent of some odd combination of church music, the Deep South, some kind of swampy bluegrass, the Phantom of the Opera — really it’s hard to pinpoint where they might go. But through the whispering murmurs, the twang and fleet…
Moondog
Manhattan in the Sixties. Every day, at the corner of 54th and Sixth, stood an imposing blind man with a druidic beard, dressed and helmeted like a Viking. Every day, he played music with home-made percussion instruments and declaimed poems. A simple eccentric or picturesque figure? No. Louis Thomas Hardin, called 'Moondog', was one of the true geniuses of his time. And even one of the geniuses of all time, prolific and visionary, capable of linking Bach, jazz and Amerindian rhythms, writing min…
Shawnee, Ohio
Shawnee, Ohio, the first album by sonic ethnographer Brian Harnetty
on Karlrecords, is an intriguing blend of archive recordings of
interviews with residents of that small town and melancholic
chamber-folk, performed by his ensemble which features, amongst others, Anna Roberts-Gevalt (Anna And Elizabeth) and Paul De Jong (The Books).
Brian Harnetty (b. 1973) is an interdisciplinary artist working between
music composition, sound, and socially engaged art. Rooted in sound
archives and the c…
Contribution
Shawn Phillips' first major album, recorded in 1968 with help from the members of Traffic, among others, is a condensation of a far more ambitious studio original that was intended to fill three LPs. The range of sounds on this record is shockingly diverse, from breezy folk-rock ("Man Hole Covered Wagon") to pieces incorporating classical guitar and phantasmagoric lyrics ("L Ballade" finds Phillips' at his most Donovan-like, but with a better voice), and, in between, bouncy throwaways ("Not Quit…
Diom Futa
Killer! Seminal and much sought after Afro Jazz session recorded in Paris in 1979 featuring Senegalese percussionist Cheikh Tidian, produced by Jean-Paul Rodrigue for his cult Freelance label. The session features saxophone player Jo Maka - leader of the Celestial Communication Orchestra but perhaps best known for his work with Angolan singer Bonga - and regular Steve Lacy collaborator Bobby Few, in a Parisian answer to Black Jazz and Strata East. A Brilliant leftfield spiritual jazz release fr…
Nakara Percussions
Killer! Within the history of efforts dedicated to percussion, Nakara Percussions’s 1984 lost marvel LP stands apart. A singular work, made remarkable by the
diversity and range of its sonorities and structures. From
the delicate pulse of nature, deep resonances and carefully placed tone,
intricate structures and tempos as slow as they go, across its movements
the album rewrites how composition for percussion should be understood,
before giving way to consuming and ecstatic rhythms which referen…
La Colonna Infinita
"La Colonna Infinita" (The Endless Column) it is inspired by the short essay " Brancusi et les mythologies" written by Mircea Eliade. The "Column of Heaven" is an axis mundi, a mythological theme already attested in prehistoric times and which, moreover, is widespread in many variations in various eras and cultures: the Irminsul column of the ancient germans, the cosmic pillars of the North Asian populations, the central mountain, the cosmic tree, etc. In the symbolism of the axis mundi, the axi…
Crossings
Crossings was the second release by the Herbie Hancock Sextet lineup known as the Mwandishi Band, following 1971's Mwandishi which stretched Hancock's already-adventurous writing and expanded the music through post-production. This approach would play an even larger role on Crossings, the pianist's final album for Warner Bros. For two of Crossings' three pieces ('Quasar' and 'Water Torture'), Hancock took basic instrumental tracks to Patrick Gleeson's Different Fur Studios, hoping to learn how t…
Fat Albert Rotunda
If Fat Albert Rotunda sounds like the most fun Herbie Hancock had in
his early years as a band leader, it should. He composed the music for
the pilot of the children's television show Fat Albert, redirecting the
post-bop jazz he honed in a five-year stint with the Miles Davis Quintet
towards the R&B and funk styles with which he was becoming
enamored. The result was a playful, joyous album in which Hancock
clearly had a great time.The same goes for the rest of his Sextet, which by the time…
Afrotheme / Percussion Blues
**Edition of 350** Two crazy rhythmic cuts by Paolo Ferrara, sourced from the super-rare library LP, “Ritmico”, on Flower Records. Afrotheme is a deep afro-jazz funky track with powerful bass lines, hot percussion, and psychedelic wah-wah guitars. Percussion Blues, on the flip side, blends African and Brazilian sounds with a unique samba groove, and a Fender Rhodes which is the icing on the cake. This is also the second of a new Four Flies 45s series, properly designed for DJs, producers, and wo…
Kaunis Maa
his release is LP and it's individually 300 hand-numbered limited edition. It's dedicated to the 1988 Experimental / Electronic masterpiece by the Italian contemporary guitarist Riccardo Giagni, originally released on Stile Libero (Italy) featuring Antonella Ruggiero, Roberto Colombo and Mauro Pagani. Archeo Recordings is a reissue record label that regenerates old, lost, obscure and forgotten rare gems of mostly Italian music but also all over the world of the 70s, 80s and 90s. All outputs are …
Presents: Music for Pussycats
These songs
literally constitute the soundtrack of my life, going back to age 16 or
perhaps earlier. It never ceases to amaze me that when I encounter
aficionados of girl pop, none of them have ever heard of singers like
Robbie Winston, Susan Rafey, Diane Ray, or most of the others on this
comp-all women who I feel have contributed works equal (if not superior)
to the best the genre has to offer. These singers, and the songs
they've recorded, have long occupied a special place in my heart…
The Pain Factory - A Public Access Tv Show 1995-1997
Edition of 350. For about three decades, Michael Contreras has been one of the most consistently intriguing artists in the Industrial Noise scene, beginning under the name Trucido, then as Death Squad, and most recently as MK9. Anyone who has followed his prolific output through the years has recognized Contreras’ versatile use of multi-media elements, including text, photography, performance, and video. Another major piece of his body of work was almost lost, however, nearly forgotten since the…
Forti
May 1, 1979 – G.X. Jupitter-Larsen introduced The Haters by way of a performance called Alluring at a small gallery in New York City, where Jupitter-Larsen lived at the time. In that performance, “Jupitter-Larsen
smashed up several video cassettes by hitting them repeatedly with a
video camera. The fractured videos still radiated images. Not by
television, but by entropy.” Forty years later, The Haters remains active—the recurring emanation of Jupitter-Larsen’s
polymathic mind. The Haters is…
Small Town Country, vol. 1
killer collection of archival tunes from around Texas compiled by compiled by Austin-based musician and record collector Jason Chronis. Liner notes by Jack D. Fleischer and vinyl mastering by John Golden, pressed at RTI. The collection is a bunch of obscure tunes from private pressings and they truly achieve what the best of country music strives for; they’re personal songs of people’s honest emotion and experience and the collection delivers a wide range of moods. A lovely little collection, wo…
Menagerie # 3
Jake Blanchard's third volume of Menagerie finally shows up just over a year after #2... The concept this time is slightly different, not only do the artists create imagery based on the musicians music, but this time the musicians also create a track based on an image created by the artist. Two exclusive new tracks from each of these artists: Ben Nash, Isengrind, C Joynes and Twinsistermoon. And exclusive new artwork by Jim Stoten, Simon Fowler, Adrianne Neil and Jake Blanchard. The sleeve is a …
Ile De Fievre
One of the most renowned French symphonic Rock bands of the 70's. Even if often compared to King Crimson, Shylock had their own distinctive personality. An intricate mixture of progressive complex structures and dark lyrical atmospheres. The band consisted of four virtuoso players: guitarist Frédéric l'Épée (later with Philarmonie), keyboardist Didier Lustig, bassist Serge Summa and drummer André Fisichella. Produced in 1978 Ile de fievre can be considered their absolute masterpiece.
Dogs' Ears Are Stupid
Mental Experience presents a reissue of Care Of The Cow's Dogs' Ears Are Stupid, originally released only on cassette in 1983. The album is a fascinating blend of psychedelic folk, minimal electronics and post-punk weirdness. Acid fuzz guitar, incredible vocal harmonies, drum machines, and analogue synths make it one of Chicago's best kept secrets, with a history that goes back to 1974. A trio formed by Victor Sanders, X Baczewska, and Sher Doruff, they had a very unique and eclectic sound, expe…
Plus or Minus Two
Plus or Minus Two compiles 4 songs from Kansas City wave pioneers Short-Term Memory’s first cassette album, Every Head Needs Cleaning, with with a song each from their last cassette release Cinema Mind, and their digital retrospective, Flub Dub and Other Love Songs. This EP focuses on the group’s prescient dance-floor DIN-sync workouts which share sensibilities with contemporaneous early Detroit experiments by Juan Atkin’s Cybotron, Ron Hardy’s visionary Kikrokos tape edit, Shoc Corridor’s exten…
Live à Metamórfosi 2019
Recorded live in Paris in 2015 (not sure wht the title says' 2019' but...) here we have an new LP from France, the legendary trio (hurdy
gurdy, bass, drums) of Yann Gourdon, Mathieu
Tilly, Jeremie Sauvage, founded in Valence back
in 2005. Over the last 14 years they've been delving into the dark folds
of drone and experimentalism, collaboratively breathing new life into
these territories or sound. An expansive universe of rhythm and
tone, at times flirting at the outer borders of Tony
Conrad's l…