New Arrivals
Jealous Heart
Mark Templeton presents Jealous Heart, an album which re-imagines the story of his sound in an approach that is both staid and deeply emotional, reorienting what is offered and what is held back through a myriad of smeared stringed instruments, fragmented horn phrases, tape loops, and found-sound-driven explorations. Templeton's music is always difficult to truly classify, which is part of its charm. It is way too dense and detailed to qualify as ambient in a traditional sense -- instead …
Colorful Disturbances
'Guitars warped so hard they dissolve into pure consciousness ! Seriously, this record had to happen because these two are the NOW of transcendental guitar weirdness. In families like ours where deformed music of one kind or another pours out of the speakers all day long, Toronto's Aidan Baker is a household name. He is no doubt one of the most imaginative experimental musicians of the new generation, quickly creating a universe of limitless sound with his bursting discography. He offers …
Ernest Thrasher
Back when I was about six months older than I am now, I used to see these bumper stickers around town that said, "There is Nothing Like a Grateful Dead Concert." My first reaction was to say, "Thank fuck," since the last Dead show I saw (Jersey City 8/6/74) pretty much blew. Then I remembered that last goddamn Dead show anyone saw was almost 20 years ago (Chicago 7/9/95) and it makes me wonder what kinda stupid pills the cars' occupants have been snorting. 'Cause Jesus, there're all sorts of thi…
Music For Fireworks
In 1978, Philippe Genion bought a guitar for 1000 belgian francs (25€). He connected it to his hifi amp, quickly learned how to play "smoke on the water" and a few punk songs with two fingers and within two weeks, pushing the amp more and more to the limit, blew his 200W speakers out. Later, around 1980, he bought an old ARP synthesizer from walloon band "Jo Lemaire plus Flouze" and started playing with these instruments and a few old flanger and distorsion pedals, and started recording so…
Convulsive Threshold
Two heavyweight explorers of sound and technology, Russell Haswell and Yasunao Tone, both undertaking separate rigorous experiments into the synthesis of sound and all its remits, converge for one helluva collaborative work. ‘Convulsive Threshold’ is the result of years of research and experimentation, Haswell’s systems of hybrid analogue/digital audio generation acting as one of the starting points for this relentess piece of material, which are then subjected to Tone’s MP3 Deviation tec…
Plekzationz
Double LP version. This recording contains seven remixes by UK-based artist and electronic musician Mark Fell of the first three 12" singles released on the record label Sensate Focus in 2012. These were called 10, 5 and 3.3.... The first of these, 10, was itself a reworking of materials from an earlier project by Fell and Terre Thaemlitz, released on Comatonse Recordings in 2012. The seven remixes were written and recorded in June 2012 at the Upper Lounge, Chatham Street (UK) using a MacBook…
Fait a la machine
40+ min of heavy machinery pounding, hissing, and vibrating, plus a bonus 63 minute CDR of the dronier side of machines at work. If you enjoy artists like Vivenza, Matt Heckert, early Esplendor Geometrico, or Chop Shop, this might be right up your alley. "Unlike a lot of recordings of natural and dissonant phenomena, Fait a la Machine works just as well as a piece of music as it does an audio documentation of the world surrounding us. It makes that leap from interesting to enjoyable in a way…
Intervisions
Intervisions documents select live actions by Andy Votel, Sean Canty of Demdike Stare, Jane Weaver, and N. Racker's NeoTantrik syzygy over the last 12 months. It breaks down to five parts recorded on location in Bristol, Rotterdam, and Stockport -- some previously issued on tape -- in mutating alignments of personnel all deeply focused on common goals of abstract sonic transcendence uniting a mind-field of mimetic and sensual references to nu-religious and metaphysical phorms. Three pieces…
100 Moons Hindustani Vocal Art 1930 to 1955
Amazing sounds from the subcontinent – a selection of mid-century recordings that focuses on the incredible vocal range in Indian music, served up by a set of singers we might never have known otherwise! The voice is almost the lead instrument here – usually just supported by a bit of percussion or sitar, and set free in open space with these insane inflections and cascading tones that really leave us breathless! Mediative and exciting vocals from the masters. Great liner notes and master…
Con-gas
Of course we know Bocian since their earliest releases, which was all on 7". Now, an impressive catalogue further, they suddenly return to this format, and make two of them. On one hand Bocian is a label for strictly improvised music and on the other hand for radical experiments in electronic music. This 7" is clearly a product of the first interest. These four pieces were recorded earlier this year in Vienna and has Nilssen-Love on congas and Gustafsson on slide and brass saxophones. This is th…
Dance Classics Vol. III
Kouhei Matsunaga's 'Dance Classics Vol.III' is the continuation of his ongoing development of his more dance oriented material, as seen from his sets with Sensational and also his other minimal techno project NHK. Not feeling tied down to one genre, Matsunaga nestles in the PAN roster, and however that isn't to say that he is dance per se as witnessed from his recent collaborations with Conrad Schnitzler. The album focuses more on bass/base electronics, music for the dancefloor and/or alt…
A Red Score In Tile
Composed in 1979 and inspired by James Elaine's painting of the same name. First released on Three Poplars on LP in 2003. Cover picture: A Red Score In Tile (L'Apocalyse des Animaux), detail, James Elaine, 1979. Canvas, acrylic paint, taxidermied animals. 112" x 120". Title on disc and inner face of back insert: "a red score in tile (1979)".
The eyes, the mouth Night of the ocean
Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon and XO4 and VAMPIRE BELT's Bill Nace team up for the third time (they also released a cassette and did a FEVER cover) showing no band needs a drummer to trash or mildly shake brains!basement jams after listening to basement jams, deep down in the deepest basement of the valley, 2 guitars fighting for a place on a chubby cassette recorder while the ultra no wave vocals of Kim Gordon ghostride thru a pretty packed parking lot.a throw back as well to early raw Sonic Youth d…
Coin coin chapter one: Gens de couleur libres
At first look this might seem like a weird move for the Constellation label as Matana Roberts’ debut for the imprint is pretty much straight-up free jazz. But she’s got some serious history with the Montreal collective, even throwing down horns with Godspeed Thinking about it too, there’s always been a nod towards the free jazz scene (not least on Colin Stetson's recent genre-bending LP) but where others were a nod, ˜COIN COIN Chapter One : Gens de Couleur Libre…
Object lessons
Object Lessons is a musical collaboration between Justin Lieberman and C. Spencer Yeh. The record is a spoken rendition of select object descriptions from the Corrector's Custom Pre-Fab House that were reworked into an experimental music format utilizing electronics and an amplified violin. Object Lessons is a limited edition of 250.
The Operetta
"The psychedelic find of the decade-their long-lost final magnum opus. Rumored to exist for years-often put down as just rumor though. Here it is, unearthed from tapes thought lost forever but now found after nearly 30 years. The first thing to be released from Ya Ho Wha 13 since 1975. In the spring of 1975 the Family was homeless and was travelling on the West Coast after having been driven out of Hawaii by local laws (they would return later that year for what would be the final time wi…
Ripatti 02
Sasu Ripatti links with the legendary Max Loderbauer (NSI., Sun Electric, MvO Trio) as Heisenberg for two knotty, complex riddim trips on his \"studio diary\" imprint. Adopting the mantle of the eponymous fictional meth chef*, the duo conduct fevered but controlled experiments in frayed, often frantic grooves eaten up with dissonant, freeform electronics. A-side is a 125bpm techno tunnel groove with offset bass hits embedded in a swarm of combustible modular chain reactions that dissolve to a gu…
Making real
Making Real, an exercise in creating reality. Created by Gerritt Wittmer in 2012-2013. Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi. Featuring the artwork of painter Nicola Samori. Gerritt Wittmer is a sound and performance artist based in Oakland, California. His work often articulates abstract narratives through vocal expression, body performance, and intense theatrical lighting. He has performed and recorded as Gerritt, Ginnungagap (with Stephen O'Malley and Tim Wyskida), Deathroes (with Sixes), and has perfo…
Backpages
Ron Morelli returns to stare down the 'floor with four pieces written during the stress-busting sessions for Spit (HOS 407CD/LP). The muggy, droning welt of "Public Consumption" kicks off with the sound of New York techno shot from the hip, while "Another Hit" vents a vintage era-Regis style built on skull-chipping snares and effluent acid modulation. The album's writhing batacuda banger, "Crack Microbes," reappears here as an extra-ferric extended "Version," sustaining the hypnotic intensi…
First Burning Attraction
Formed in 2009, Damien Dubrovnik is the Danish electronic duo of Christian Stadsgaard (Sarah's Charity) and Loke Rahbek (Sexdrome, Var, Lust For Youth), founders of the Copenhagen-based record label Posh Isolation. In their day-job as label managers, Stadsgaard and Rahbek have been instrumental in establishing the city's prolific and exciting noise/punk community and outgrowing their humble beginnings in noise/industrial culture by attracting a cult/fanatical worldwide following. Working to…