New Arrivals
Plays Bee Mask
Double LP version. In hindsight, the pairing of Chris Madak and Donato Dozzy was inevitable from the moment when the two connected on Mount Naeba, Japan at the storied Labyrinth party last fall. Both artists have worked to craft singular visions unlike anything else happening in electronic music today, yet despite each producer's unmistakable individuality, there is a deeper reservoir of shared sensibility between them which makes Donato Dozzy Plays Bee Mask feel like a logical and necessar…
We Will Always Be
There's a disarming honesty to the way Michigan-based husband and wife duo Windy & Carl communicate with one another. A blog post from Windy, published in late 2011, describes the making of We Will Always Be, framing it in the context of their relationship. "Yeah, we have had bumps in the road, and on occasion it seems as if we may never recover from these bumps, but we do," she wrote. That type of candor doesn't stop at the written word; it also bleeds through into the duo's music. Often their …
Ovenschotels
Both DT and JC have been sending eachother garbage and leftovers since a few years, sometimes almost nothing, probably out of pity, often to make eachother smile or as an act of friendship.Sharing the last spoon of cold soup on a cold winter night, when the heater does not want to be touched. these 36 pages are filth, with found imagery or buggles that the cleaning lady forgot to sniff out, images that have been dominating our seperate rooms for years and that remain unnoticed because of the dai…
Ensemble Pearl
Double LP edition. Cosmic, heavy amplified rock drops and ripples, auras radiate and expand into cloud forms, through which lightning bolts. Tides rise, the moons wax upon a place somewhere between Link Wray, Hex-era Earth and early Tangerine Dream. The echoes return, leaving a trail that blows and drifts, creating a separate piece. Ensemble Pearl are Atsuo, William Herzog, Michio Kurihara and Stephen O'Malley. Their debut album also features the elemental forces of Eyvind Kang and Timba H…
Das Testament
Backwards proudly presents the reissue of a private Maurizio Bianchi vinyl LP, issued in a small edition of 300 copies in 1983 and titled "Das Testament". M.B. is an Italian pioneer of noise music, born near Milan. Bianchi began to produce music in 1979, and since 1980 has used electronic equipment with the avowed goal "to produce technological sounds and in such a way to work on complete realising of the modern decadence". Now remastered, for this release MB plays electronics, rhythms, neutroni…
The miraculous mechanical monster
'The Miraculous Mechanical Monster is the latest addition to the ever growing and highly collectible 'Monster' series from Andrew Liles. The Miraculous Mechanical Monster is in part a concept LP that tells a tale of malfunctioning robots, monsters and bizarre sex. With robotic narration throughout, the story can be followed by reading the text on the back of the LP. As with all of Andrew Liles' output this LP fits into no established musical genre and is arguably one of his strangest and …
Palimpsest
It’s no secret how much we’ve loved Stephan Mathieu’s sublime drones and Sylvain Chauveau’s delicate compositions in the past, so to see these two pillars of experimental music collaborating has got us hot under the collar. But that’s not the half of it – not only did the two decide to work together, they had a very specific concept - ‘Palimpsest’ finds the duo reframing the timeless songs of Bill Callahan (aka Smog). Those familiar with Callahan’s writing might struggle to work out just how two…
Mask of the Maker
Fuses deep kosmische moods w/ jet-propulsion lab experiments, classic galactic Italo, soaring starblood synth workouts, funky astral ragas, psychedelic dust coulds & rare mantric guest vocals
Lipstick
This valley-chameleon changed colours more than David Bowie dyed his hair, which takes a lot of skin, brains and guts in an area that should have been called Noisehampton, a hay fevered pit surrounded by mountains that stare at champions such as Body/Head, Fat Worm Of Error, Thurston Moore, Breaking World, Joshua Burkett and so on, all playing in premier leak! Krefting was a member of the glammed Velvet rock band The Believers, of the much loved drone band Son Of Earth with Aaron Rosenblum…
Live at Caffe Lena: Music from America's Legendary Coffeehouse
"Unreleased performances by Dave Van Ronk, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Kate McGarrigle, Rick Danko, Anais Mitchell, Sleepy John Estes, Arlo Guthrie, Sarah Lee Guthrie, and more. Caffè Lena, the oldest continuously operating folk music coffeehouse in the US. Opened by Lena Spencer in 1960, this tiny room has played host to influential artists across diverse genres of music; traditional folk, blues, singer-songwriters, jazz, and bluegrass. Luckily, many performances were caught on tape through …
Mad Curry
Founded in Belgium in 1970 with a remarkable line-up for a rock band: sax, organ, bass, drums and vocals - no guitar!, Mad Curry caught the attention of manager & enterpreneur Louis de Vries (the man who had arranged the very first Pink Floyd gig in Belgium) and soon debuted with the "Song for Cathreen" / "Antwerp" 45. "Antwerp" has become a club favourite ever since due to its danceable freakbeat psych rhythm. Shortly after, the Mad Curry album was released on the Pirate label, characterized by…
Winds & Skins
Winds & Skins transpired to be the very last set of recordings made by Afro-Cuban percussionist Sabu Martinez, who sadly passed away precisely one month after this December 1978 session was committed to tape. The album draws a line under a career that saw the illustrious musician performing alongside Dizzy Gillespie and Art Blakey as well as releasing a string of out-and-out classic Latin jazz records. Here the noted conguero teams up with the lauded saxophonist/flautist Sahib Shihab, who himsel…
Afro Noise I (Volume 4)
Dirter Promotions presents another volume of Cut Hands material, containing reworked and remastered versions of some tracks from his Afro-noise project. Comes in a beautiful special edition on 180 gram vinyl mastered by Noel Summerville and featuring the magical vévé artwork of Mimsy DeBlois, in a one-off pressing of 750 copies. The entire 750-limited pressings of Volume 1 and Volume 2 sold out on release day, so don't miss these! A reclamation of the conscious through 16 pieces (split betwe…
An Anthology Of Noise and Electronic Music: Volume 2
Finally available on vinyl for the very first time - featuring exclusive and never before available material from the likes of Autechre, Tod Dockstader, Luc Ferrari and so much more - in a super heavyweight and deluxe gatefold package* This second volume of this excellent compilation series from Sub Rosa features an exclusive/previously unreleased Autechre track 'Bronchus 1' from 1991 - an alternate version of the track on 'Incunabula'. A second chronology of pioneering sound artists cove…
s/t
"Marissa Nadler's Kickstarter funded self-titled self-release. Brian McTear produced the album, which Nadler says is the 'most honest, natural record' of her career." "You'll want this music to never end...best severe and complex emotions that we've possibly never recognized in this or previous lives." -- LA Weekly
Continuation
Recorded in the 1960s with Marshall Allen featured on Jupiterian flute and Danny Thompson on Neptunian libflecto. The original LP was pressed in very small numbers at the end of the 60′s, with purposely mislabeled details in the liner notes in typical fashion to Ra’s output during that phase. The contents are believed to be from 1963-64, a period that produced some of the composers most revered works and an era when Ra relocated to New York from Chicago. What we do know about Continuation i…
Choubi Choubi Folk And Pop Songs From Iraq Vol. 2
In 2005, Sublime Frequencies released Choubi Choubi: Folk and Pop Sounds from Iraq, and in the ensuing years it has become one of the most beloved and venerable titles in their catalog. Now almost 10 years later, this highly-anticipated second volume is finally here. Compiler and producer Mark Gergis has once again put forth a revelatory and poignant collection of Iraq's national folk music. What has happened to Iraq since the 2003 U.S. invasion and eventual occupation? Endless death, destructio…
Indonesia Pop Nostalgia - Pan-Indonesian Pop, Folk, Instrumental
It is an eclectic collection of inspired Indonesian folk and pop music culled from cassettes and vinyl recorded and released during the 1970s and 1980s. The music on this collection spans several contemporary popular genres - each inherently unique and born from very different cultural and geographical origins within the archipelago. All, however, are also vitally informed by Islamic, Arabic and South Asian popular and traditional music, alongside various Western musical fads -- a distinctly Ind…
Recur
After successful EP Collapsed, the Bristol-based project Emptyset strikes back with a full-length album on Raster-Noton. Once more James Ginzburg and Paul Purgas challenge the perceptual boundaries between noise and music and the potential for both technology and architecture to embed and codify themselves within sound. Recur is presented as Emptyset's third studio album -- continuing on from their work with Demiurge, the material examines the central themes of time, structure and recursion, thr…
Vaseline Race
Here’s a very limited coloured vinyl thing by Cicciolina Holocaust. There’s one of those photocopied pictures on the front where I’m pretty sure I don’t want to look at it for long enough to figure out what’s going on, much like Urashima seem to specialise in - it looks like some people are doing something very bad to another person. The tracks here originally came out on cassette in 1984 and have been remastered for this release.It’s dark industrial droney harsh no…