New Arrivals
Program
"A collaboration between Kouhei Matsunaga (who has worked with everyone from Sensational to Autechre and Asmus Tietchens) and the less prolific Toshio Munehiro, NHK’s ultra minimalist approach to techno may conjure memories of the late 90s/early 2000s glitch and microsound scenes, but their combination of erratic beats and digital expanses feels anything but dated, sounding entirely unique and fresh in 2015. I have always had a soft spot for that short lived era that was often full of derided la…
Sleepwalkers In A Cold Circus
On Sleepwalkers in a Cold Circus Belgian sound artist Koenraad Ecker creates a biotope of musical characters that is sober, delicate, complex and vivid, with a restrained intensity, a “cold fire.” The characters discuss, hesitate, fight, pull closer, push back. Through the use of microtonality and recordings of acoustic instruments it is the elusive sound of a somnambulistic travelogue. “I’m searching for ways to create an intricate narrative, switching perspectives and voices within one form, t…
Days
Triac is a new trio project led by Rossano Polidoro of former duo TU M' whose beautiful 2009 sold out LINE release Monochromes Vol.1 (LINE_040) garnered great acclaim. Days is an album of dazzling yet smooth distant drones that almost hover in the air. The sound of the slowest moving picture and subtle flickering lights beyond it. For listeners who appreciate the works of Celer, William Basinski, and Stephan Mathieu.Triac is a discrete electronic music trio formed in the end of 2011. Their work …
A Ravishment Of Mirror
Los Angeles, a city of mirrors, twinkling lights, noir history, and deep secrets is the new home for Pinkcourtesyphone. This third full album explores Hollywood dreams and deception… meant to be slowly sipped. We all pretend but in Hollywood pretending is its dark sustenance… a plastic organic unity ready to enfold and repackage you. "Richard Chartier recently raised the curtain up on his interesting project Pinkcourtesyphone by a series of releases with thematic interconnections. His third full…
Flower & Water
Steve Roden writes:"Flower & Water began with an offer to work with the first Dragon’s Eye release – a flexi-disc with a recording of George Winston playing a blues piano composition called “Medley: Bread Baker’s Stomp” – as source material. Since I am not a true remixer, I decided to modify the track via physical manipulation. Most of the material began with cutting up some of the flexi’s and taping back together in ‘wrong’ ways. I then played (or tried to play) the broken records that had been…
Fable
Lawrence English and Stephen Vitiello are creators of mythology. Their mythology renders a series of acoustic spaces, haunted by narrative and hinting at happenings unseen, but certainly heard. With Fable, we are presented with their second duet. It chronicles three years of intermittent audio communications in search of new collaborative approaches. The results focus on the pair’s joint interests in modular synthesis, field recordings and the blurry boundaries between acoustic instrumentation a…
Malefactor, Ade
In 1989, ‘Malefactor, Ade’ was issued on the UK’s Glass Records, which had arranged several years earlier for the first actual release of Mayo Thompson’s 1970 solo LP, ‘Corky’s Debt To His Father’. This was the first Red Crayola record release in five years. The fearlessness with which genres are converted can be disarming, but stick to it - you’ll find listening an utter triumph. ‘Malefactor, Ade’ was reissued on CD by Drag City in the year 2000. Now it's on lovely vinyl.
Alternate Moon Cycles
The first half of the decade has seen cornet virtuoso and composer Rob Mazurek through significant achievements and personal losses, often linked inextricably through his creative processes. In and around the passing of his mentor and colleague, the trumpeter Bill Dixon in 2010 and his mother in 2013, Mazurek has found inspirations that are unique even for an innovator of his caliber. Mazurek and Dixon worked closely in achieving a deeper understanding of the pure tone of the trumpet (or cornet,…
Who Is The Sender?
Ask Bill Fay about his relationship with his instrument and he says something revealing, not ”Ever since I learnt to play the piano,” but “Ever since the piano taught me…” What the piano taught him was how to connect to one of the great joys of his life. “Music gives,” he says. And he is a grateful receiver. But, it makes him wonder, “Who is the sender?” Fay - who after more than five decades writing songs is finally being appreciated as one of our finest living practitioners of the art – assert…
The Hexadic System
Introducing a new approach to playing and composing music - The Hexadic System doesn’t require the use of a computer or an internet hookup. All that the interested player will need is a copy of ‘The Hexadic System’ book and a regular deck of playing cards. The struggle of habit is a problem in all walks of life, particularly creative work. We don’t always have an instinct to question the systems we are taught but consider the old adage about history being written by the winners. What does that i…
Cascade
"Cascade" is the first new album in over two years. Includes Bonus Download: “The Deluge" (Live at Issue Project Room). Cascade and The Deluge are variations on the latest tape-loop and delay composition from the inimitable William Basinski. In Cascade, a single ancient lilting piano tape loop repeats endlessly carrying one along in its tessellating current. In The Deluge, the same loop is processed through a series of feed-back loops of different lengths creating a spiraling crescendo of overto…
Never Were The Ways She Was
Two of Constellation's acclaimed solo instrumental artists join forces on this tremendous new album of original compositions for horn and violin. Colin Stetson has developed a unique and renowned voice as a performer and composer, chiefly on bass and tenor saxophones, where he rallies an array of technical strengths and innovations (circular breathing, contact micing of his own body and the body of his instrument, vocalizations through the reed) to make some of the most captivatingly organic, da…
A Forum For The Arts / Studio
ARNE NORDHEIM Forum for the Arts (1969)Taken from the soundtrack to A Forum for the Arts – a promotional film about Henie Onstad Kunstsenter directed by Pål Bang-Hansen in 1970. Original material recorded in Studio Eksperymentlne Warsaw, 1969. Edited and reconstructed by Helge Sten at Audio Virus Lab, 2012. Licensed by Rannveig GetzDEATHPROD Studio (2010)Taken from the sound and light installation Studio commissioned for the John Cage – The Anarchy of Silence exhibition at Henie Onstad Kunstse…
Ultrasonic Bathing Apparatus
Ultrasonic Bathing Apparatus is an apotheosis of the deep sound. Built around the concept of numbness and sensorial deprivation, the album unfolds in seven movements. An ideal path that alternates between dives alienating themselves from external tension and re-emergences, where the sounds become palpable and consistent. A continuous transition from deep tense drones, making you feel disconnected from body perception, and actual sounds, that make you fall quickly back into the outside world. Un…
Beyond Repair
Beyond Repair is its latest solo cd. Eleven short tracks for modular synth, home made electronics and tape recorders. A true union between coarse substance of analogical devices and voltage of tense electronics. The core of Beyond Repair is the fusion of its contrasts. Permanent tension between chiselling and bare deconstruction, meditation and frontal sound, cold stasis and unstable dynamics. Eleven tracks that run without pause as a single composition that hits like a strong cut-up aggression…
CMRS/OPEA
Mindblowing double LP taken by a Maurizio Bianchi impossible-to-find early tape (from 1980!) "decomposed" in October 1980 using cacophonelectronics, and dedicated to the physical attraction to Sylvia Simonelli (September 1980/June 1981) “The genesis of this work is incredible. In the office where I worked, I had found a stamp with ‘’COMPRESA’’ (in English, included) written over it, and so I came to the starting point for a new experimental work. Erasing before the second, fourth, sixth and ei…
Alchemy Box Is Stupid
Box is Stupid is a really luxurious and rather neat boxset that brings together 11 CD and 2Dvds cd's worth of early out print 1990’s tape releasers by Japanese noise tearing duo The Incapacitants. It's really a must have item item for any serious and discerning noise fan. "As far as I'm concerned, the Incapacitants are THE best noise band to ever come out of Japan. While they aren't as prolific or esoteric as some of their contemporaries, they've consistently been responsible for some of …
Il Sorriso Del Grande Tentatore
The first ever official LP reissue of a classic 1974 score! Spiritual cousin to the psyche-liturgy of The Electric Prunes' 1968 'Mass In F Minor' and William Sheller's 1972 masterwork 'Lux Aeterna', 'Il Sorriso Del Grande Tentatore' is a vital, beautiful, frightening and yet essentially forgotten chapter in the storied discography of lauded composer Ennio Morricone. This LP, with remastered sound, includes two previously unreleased tracks. Morricone's favourite Morricone! Included …
Septet//2013
A new release on Hideaki Shimada (Agencement) label. It is new title after 13 years! Double CD of subtle-Tokyo Group improvisations by Tetuzi Akiyama (guitar), Junji Hirose (tenor sax), Hideo Ikegami (contrabass), Ko Ishikawa (sho), Kazushige Kinoshita (violin), Toshihiro Koike (trombone), Madoka Kouno (tape recorders), Maresuke (contraviola), Kenichi Matsumoto (tenor sax), Hideaki Shimada (violin)Manabu Suzuki (electronics), and Daysuke Takaoka (tuba).Recorded two concerts with septet of differ…
Stratosphere Sound
Hironari Iwata began his solo project Toukaseibunshi (Transparent Molecules) in 1985. In the same year he formed a second unit called Haiginsha, and began collaborating with Merzbow and Agencement. Iwata also ran the independent label Angakok, releasing several albums on cassette and curating a compilation that featured some the most radical musicians of the period including H.N.A.S., Asmus Tietchens, P16.D4, DDAA, etc. But in 1988 he suddenly ceased all musical activities. He returned to public…