New Arrivals
Le peuple des falaises
QUATUOR CASSINI: Benjamin Bondonneau (clarinet), Laurent Charles (tenor saxophone), Fabrice Charles (trombone), Sébastien Cirotteau (trumpet) with Beñat ACHIARY (voice). Recorded in troglodytes sites in France, October 2008.
47°13' N 7°E
Another uncommon sonic wringer from Portuguese label Creative Sources has been signed by a couple of Switzerland-based (as you could easily surmise from the geographical coordinate, which point to a place the district of Franches-Montagnes in the canton of Jura in Switzerland, they used to name this release) musicians, Lea Danzeisen and Christoph Schiller, who decided to squeeze the spinet, the little brother of harpsichord and piano, whose sound got totally transfigured by meticulous mod…
Mubomuso
Mubomuso is a neologism, made up from two extant words. Mubo suggests the unadorned and unaffected, while muso means to be in a state without thought or preplanning. All parts of the release lead the listener towards the consideration of a very specific topic Ð namely, war and violence, and the deeper connections to human nature. Stripped of the clothing of civilization, etiquette and socialization, we slowly become aware of reactions and purposes that exist deep within us embedded comma…
SFU 40: Celebrating Electroacoustic Music 1965-2005
Amazing anthology focused on The Electronic Music Studio at Simon Fraser University (SFU) was founded by R Murray Schafer when the university opened in 1965, the third such studio in Canada, after the University of Toronto and McGill University (Montréal). It was located in the basement of the SFU Theatre as part of the Centre for Communication and the Arts. Composers such as Schafer, Anthony Gnazzo, Peter Huse, …
Life Is People
Bill Fay is one of English music's best kept secrets. At the dawn of the 1970s, he was a one-man song factory, with a piano that spilled liquid gold and a voice every bit the equal of Ray Davies, John Lennon, early Bowie, or Procol Harum's Gary Brooker. He made two solo albums but his contract wasn't renewed, which left his LPs and his reputation to become cult items. But he never stopped writing, the music kept on coming. Now, in his late sixties, he has produced Life Is People, a brand …
Nemcatacoa
Achingly beautiful album fusing elements of everything from Earth to Windy & Carl, Stephen O'Malley, My Bloody Valentine, Fennesz, Keith Fullerton Whitman and Emeralds - miss out at your peril!!! Elm is the solo project of Jon Porras, one half of the deeply revered San Francisco drone lords, Barn Owl. Only his third release in solo mode, 'Nemcatacoa' has strong ties to his other project, but revolves around a lonelier and more personal agenda, with eight incredible tracks of widescreen Americana…
Coda (For WK)
The new CD-EP (clocking in at 20 minutes exactly) from Stephan Mathieu is a coda to A Static Place (2011, 12k), created with his highly focused setup of two mechanical-acoustic gramophones and computer. Coda (For WK) is dedicated to the legendary “quiet” pianist Wilhelm Kempff, whose 1927 recordings of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 26 Les Adieux from a double 12” 78RPM set on Brunswick were used as input for an autogenerative process. Mathieu’s process emphasizes the archaic beauty and texture of…
Rip
Recorded up and down the West Coast by JESSE JACKSON, CORYDON RONNAU, and JOHN WIESE and featuring appearances by YELLOW SWANS, PETER KOLOVOS (OPEN CITY) and PAUL COSTUROS (DEATH SENTENCE: PANDA!). Studio and live recordings with concrète witcery.
Planetary Unknown
"It's a great summer for music, with some excellent albums just released - and more reviews to come ... Let's start with the great David S. Ware and his new quartet, a great quartet, with William Parker playing the bass as on all other David S. Ware albums, with Cooper-More on piano instead of Matthew Shipp, and with Muhammad Ali on drums (the latest in a long list, with Susie Ibarra, Guillermo E. Brown, Warren Smith, Whit Dickey, Hamid Drake, ... and quite a phenomenal list at that).It is no do…
Castings
The title of Fern Knight’s 2006 release, Music for Witches and Alchemists, served simultaneously as a wonderfully apt description and an unambiguous product warning. If you prefer the mundane to the magical, move on: These are not the druids you’re looking for. Since then, the group has relocated to Arlington from Philadelphia, and while Fern Knight’s music evokes far-away times and places, it turns out the band fits in nicely with the D.C. area’s musical history—assuming you can stomach …
Comme
Billy Gomberg (b 1979, Chicago) is a musician and video artist living in Brooklyn, New York. His studio practice incorporates analog synthesis, digital treatments, acoustic recordings and custom programming that gives rise to electronic sound caught gazing at its own physicality, acoustics in love with their own abstraction. Billy's debut CD release displays abstract and complex dimensions of texture and tone that might make more sense at first on a subconscious level before it will on a conscio…
Malaikat dan Singa
Arrington de Dionyso is a multi-instrumentalist who plays guitar, synths and bass clarinet, does Tuvan throat singing and generally sings with the intensity of a madman. And despite being an America, on Malaikat dan singa he sings in Indonesian, which, thanks to his idiosynchratic singing style, makes him sound particularly demented. As it happens, the lyrics are adapted and translated lines from poems by William Blake. Not that you would understand a single one of them unless you know Indonesia…
The 4th world
"The 4th World is The Work's long-lost, never before issued, very last album, from 1994. Succeeding See by some two years, it shares that album's aesthetics and approach - an economy of means, and superior song-writing/ playing - even when compared to their earlier albums. One wouldn't guess it was recorded live at a gig in Breisgau, because the sound is, quite honestly, superlative, and is even better than any of their studio albums. The original, mono recordings (by Volkmar Miedtke) were metic…
Harmony In Ultraviolet
This is the first proper vinyl release for Tim Hecker's breakthrough 2006 album. At the time of original issue, there was a small run of a few hundred vinyl copies done by a small German label, but this was pressed on an inferior sounding single LP which was much too short for the length of the album, not to mention the wide dynamic range of the recording. This new version is mastered at 45rpm over four sides for maximum sound quality. Full color gatefold sleeve.
Moondog and suncat suites
By 1956, the early New York street recordings of the great Moondog had reached British shores. His primitive percussive sounds struck a new nerve with many artists and musicians, none more so that fine London jazzman Kenny Graham. So inspired was he by these extraordinary recordings that he decided to bring together a band of top notch session men and pay his very own musical homage. The result is this exceptionally rare and unique 1957 album of Moondog covers (Moondog Suite) and Graham’s…
Filmworks XXIII: El General
Eleven cues recorded for a striking documentary focusing on the life of controversial Mexican dictator Plutarco Elias Calles who was called everything from a nun-burner to the father of modern Mexico. Beautiful and dramatic, the music is scored for guitar, marimba, accordion/piano and bass and subtly draws upon Mexican, Spanish, minimalist and soundtrack traditions. Zorn's fifth film score in as many months is a pure delight. Moody and exotic music for a creative and revealing film dealing with …
Joy Shapes
To say that the words "unique" and "singular" are over-used in describing music is to state the obvious. To apply these words to the sounds created by the various duo/trio configurations of the Texas group Charalambides over the last decade plus would be understatement. To be sure there are numerous antecedents to their music; to deny this of any artist's work would be akin to saying that they are deaf. But they have surely broken new ground in the primitive/folk/mystic/improv/psych valley in …
Brahms’ Deutsche Volkslieder
"Only one face": Following their price-winnig recording Schubertlieder, the Tyrolean Musicbanda Franui have now taken up Johannes Brahms' German Folk Songs.
Superficial Music
Re-release with bonus tracks recorded in 1982. On 1981's Superficial Music masterpiece, French electronic composer Bernard Szajner presents selections from his previous "Visions of Dune" sessions played backwards and at half speed, enhanced through the use of digital and analog devices, as well as "Oswicim," a three-part reflection on the Holocaust that draws on his own family's experience. Szajner's touch is delicate and evocative, making for a powerful, if understated, listening experie…
Organ
This is Jun Konagaya (a.k.a. GRIM )s first solo album. GRIM released collection of complete sound sources from hanng niap records in 2009. and insanity live performance was resumed after it. And having been released this time is not GRIM but a solo Jun konagaya name. Atrocious feedback/roaring cannot be heard there. "Organ" The malformed story about floating folk song of malformation, such as "Message" of GRIM. Inner surface of the universe is filled with deep sorrow of Jun konagaya, has been ex…