New Arrivals
Wireless
1st live album by Norway's Geir Jenssen - recorded in 2007 by Chris Watson & mastered by Touch stalwart BJNilsen. In the early 1990s, he was a pioneer of so-called "ambient techno," but since then, he has refined his sound into something more magnetic & enduring. Here, he incorporates samples of field recordings by Jony Easterby & trumpet by Anders Karlskas, invoking a sparser, more arresting sound.
Portrait
The works of Clemens Gadenstätter are a wonderful example to evidence how an analytical approach to the phenomenon of hearing may result in music that sincerely moves its listeners. This production, entitled “Portrait,” represents a kind of screen capture of Gadenstätter’s oeuvre. Portraits are sometimes given away as presents in order to convey something of the essence of whom or which they portray. Clemens Gadenstätter’s music is perfectly suited as such a gift. …
Sift
"This is the second release, after a long wait, from this unique ensemble. Equally at home with the discipline of composition and the tightrope of improvisation Blast have evolved a fluid, pointillistic, unfathomable but transparent musical language that seamlessly integrates -- over very short durations -- highly complex writing and very free ranging improvisation, allowing the two languages to merge and combine into a new kind of logical exposition that makes sense but can't be reverse-enginee…
Heaps of nothing
The second album from Australian band Naked On The Vague, who have doubled in size for this batch of new material. The tone is characterised by dark and fearsomely heavy garage-punk, with a wafer-thin coating of distortion lending a little extra bite to the band's already vicious dynamics. "Bleak, unrepentant, withering and droll, Heaps of Nothing is a 21st century codification of the gallows wit and mesmerizing otherworldliness of (Dub Housing-era) Pere Ubu, Primitive Calculators and L…
Lifetime Of Romance
Heartland synthesist Dylan Ettinger follows up 2010's widely lauded New Age Outlaws imaginary cyber-soundtrack with a stark, dark, and intensely different collection of misshapen new wave weirdnesses, Lifetime Of Romance. Recorded at a proper studio, and written over the course of a year, the seven songs of Romance reflect a heavy influence from the fringier strains of bummed out quasi-industrial synth-pop in the vein of Fad Gadget, certain Cabaret Voltaire, early Human League, etc, but dra…
Tenkujin
Fifth and final release by Far East Family Band (if you include the 1973s Nihonjin released under the Far Out banner), Tenkujin was the first of the bands albums to be released in the US on the small and short-lived Calfornian-based All Ears label. Without Kitaro, who by this time had departed to persue a solo career, the band reverted to its earlier balled-based sound, this time supported on drums by former Samurai alumnist Yujin Harada. The expected Pink Floyd influences appear in abundance, a…
All Is Falling
The ultra savant of 12-string mantra cycles expands further into cinematic, orchestral glory - an orgy of organic, deeply felt & exquisitely played pathways to the sublime. His 1st foray into the realm of the electric 12-string guitar. Comprised of one slowly evolving, shifting piece of music in eight parts, replete w/ swirling string cycles & wind instruments augmenting his extended pointillist flurries w/ clouds of sound, sometimes adding delicate counter-melodies but just as often feed…
Fotheringay
Fledg'ling's 2004 reissue of one of the highest-regarded British folk-rock albums, featuring Sandy Denny. Originally issued by Island in 1970 (previous Hannibal CD long o/p). With additional artwork and bonus tracks. Fotheringay's beautiful debut album was recorded in 1970, and has long been regarded as one of the greatest achievements of British folk-rock. Sandy Denny, Trevor Lucas, Jerry Donahue, Pat Donaldson and Gerry Conway created a magical ensemble sound and one of the finest albums of…
Lo-lee-ta
Vladimir Nabokov: the master of "chamber music in prose" (literary critic Marcel Reich-Ranicki) and composer of crackling word sonatas. Franz Koglmann: a commuter between jazz/avant-garde and literature, and writer of intimate sound novellas. It was only a matter of time before Koglmann would create "Music on Nabokov," and transform literary motifs and characters into music. Together with his Monoblue Quartet (Tony Coe, clarinet/saxophone, Ed Renshaw, guitar, Peter Herbert, bass) the trumpeter K…
Passages
Lawrence Butch Morris developed the concept of “conduction” to account for a mode of Instant Composition based on the creative freedom of the players stimulated by the gestures of a central conductor. AP/DP, with this cd, invent the practice of musical transduction. Just like the French language is not “translated” but transducted into Kamau Daáood’s unique prosody, DP’s cello does not “translate” the playing of a thumb piano, an oud or a kora: all of these instruments, all of their phrasings el…
Out Of This World's Distortions
Farmers By Nature – drummer Gerald Cleaver, bassist William Parker, and pianist Craig Taborn – a fully-improvising unit, a complete musical collective. Each of these men are highly regarded & admired composers and bandleaders in their own right; their coming together to create new music is always an auspicious and deeply fruitful occasion. Superbly attuned listeners and masterful players of their respective instruments, they are without question one of the finest improvising units / musical grou…
Experiments \'80-\'82
self-issued cd collecting two early 80s cassette-only releases (“quiz party” & “life in video city”) by richard bone, both tipped by the mutant sounds crew a few years back resulting in something of a renewed interest in this otherwise obscure figure in the 70s / 80s “minimal synth” wave - jumping back & forth between noisy, arpeggiated sequences & more atemporal modes (i can certainly hear the tod dockstader influence throughout the “quiz party” pieces) this is in many ways the perfect disc for…
The Sky Is Full Of Kytes
Mindblowing!!! Simon Balestrazzi should need no introduction. He founded T.A.C. (Tomografia Assiale Computerizzata) in 1982 and has bee pioneering the italian industrial scene since then. His passion for sound synthesis and exploration brought him in recent years to develop a research in electro-acoustics, both in duos, trios and also in solo.
Not a leaf remains as it was
In 1995 Steve Peters and Steve Roden toured as a trio with singer Anna Homler; sometimes they would vocalize behind her, and they liked the way their voices blended together. They then spent about 15 years saying that “someday” they should record a voice-based project together. Aside from the physical distance between them, the problem was always: What would we sing? Neither wanted to write or sing lyrics.Inspiration came in the form of a book of Japanese jisei – poems allegedly written by monks…
13 miniatures for Albert Ayler
Would it be that when everything finishes that everything starts? Rather than a postlude or a coda, the five minutes a cappella by Joe McPhee on the tenor saxophone placed here in thirteenth position, sound like a song of love and hope coloured utopia which condenses the invisibility of lives which are here and then are no longer here.from the effervescence of an aviary where chirpings and warbling intersect (from Raphael Imbert, Urs Leimgruber, McPhee, Evan Parker and John Tchicai each sax seem…
Moss
Moss, is a live recording from a unique collaboration by sound artists/musicians Molly Berg, Olivia Block, Steve Roden and Stephen Vitiello. This was a midnight concert at the beautiful Trinity Cathedral in San Jose, CA which was part of the 01SJ Biennial. Olivia and Steve had performed solo sets on the previous nights. The final night was meant to be a duo with Molly and Stephen but the opportunity to play with musicians/friends who we admire so much called out for an invitation to play …
Tummaa
Marks a significant shift in emphasis in this acclaimed musician's work, reflecting a renewed interest in jazz & acoustic performance - this is far more organic than anything he's done before.
Manfauna
Miasma are a band comprised of various members of Guapo, Cathedral, Chrome Hoof and Elsa Drake all playing at the top of their form on this three-part sequence of instrumentals. The band court references to prog, the occult and Victoriana - at least that's what the press release is saying, and I'm not one to argue. The group's fearsome instrumental abilities are the real source of Miasma's strength, with sophisticated, thorough arrangements boasting some of the finest implementation of bassoon y…
Grand Electronic Suite
Recorded at the Roundhouse 1972, during the ICES Festival."For this show we rehearsed a week in a small village in the south of Holland. The repertoire of the first part was a kind of "frozen improvisation". We made some written plans about the form and structures and then rehearsed it for the whole week. So during these rehearsals things moved from improvisation into fixed form, just by remembering what we have played, and polishing it. This is a working concept that …
extended loudspeakers
Jerrycans connected by a network of steel wires, each wire length and can location is adapted to the space. A loudspeaker is slipped inside one of the cans; the sounds it broadcasts make the wires vibrate. When these sounds are modulated (pitch, timbre, volume, density), the cans produce various resonances, which can be injected back into the speaker (feedback). The cans are hanging, so that listeners can circulate and choose different listening perspectives.