New Arrivals
The Rocker
THE WIRE'S BEST OF 2010!
Jailbreak s the duo of pedal steel-vocalist Heather Leigh and drummer Chris Corsano. The name foregrounds the kind of outlaw violence with which the two reformulate rock-roll instants by bringing free jazz fire power to amp-humping sex beats. Their musical alliance goes all the way back to the legendary Brattleboro Free Folk Fest, the birthplace of the 'New Weird America', where Corsano and his long-term saxophone partner Paul Flaherty joined Leigh and Christina C…
Black Tie
LP version. Includes mp3 download and full-color poster. After two bone-chilling full-lengths for the Type Recordings imprint, Erik K. Skodvin has embarked on his first journey for his own Miasmah label with Black Tie. While originally conceived as a soundtrack to an installation by Norwegian artist Marit Følstad, Skodvin uses this as a starting point to craft his most unnerving long-form pieces to date. Split into two distinct movements, "Black Tie" and "White Noise," we are exposed to the y…
Ensemble Pearl
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 Harris. These playe…
P.A./Hard Love
On P.A./Hard Love, New York-based composer and conceptual sound artist Marina Rosenfeld generates an esoteric universe of radical sonic collisions. Developed initially in 2009, the album draws its roots following a series of idiosyncratic quasi-sculptural sound-system installations Rosenfeld installed in various disused and monumental sites including New York's Park Avenue Armory and Liverpool's Renshaw Hall car park. The music she composed for these installations was heterogeneous, reposit…
Crowded
Breathtaking slab of the black stuff from peerless drone/noise (de)composer Kevin Drumm - with "spectral editing and time domain consultation" by Russell Haswell. We shouldn't need to tell you that this is a big deal. But, in case you're a bit daft; it is. Haswell helps out on the wormholing A-side 'Repetitive Algae'; a single tract of cacophonous, morphing rhythmic noise reminding of Philip Corner's 'Coldwater Basin' - a home recording of cold water running from a faucet into a basin - b…
Cities
Strong field recordings capture more than just the sound of an area, they capture a mood and spirit of the place and people. On Cities, local color and nature recordings clash with riots and discord, capturing the full human experience across the world. Literal and metaphorical “found music” appears: the booming stereo of a passing car or distant church bells, as does the rhythmic engine hum of a bus or the chirping of birds. This tour is a fast paced one, rapidly weaving through the geog…
Trainwrekz
Ensemble Skalectrik is a side-project of Nick "Ekoplekz" Edwards. Previous emissions include the self-released psycho-geographical abstraction of Snuff Mill Tapes and a homage to Maurizio Bianchi via Feral Tapes. Focusing entirely on spontaneous composition and one-take improvisation, Ensemble Skalectrik represents the most raw, extreme performance-based electronic music in Edwards' repertoire. On Trainwrekz, Edwards has dusted-off his turntables, grabbed a stack of old vinyl (mainly sound e…
August Undone
Sweeping and rustically romantic neo-classical and drone flights seemingly dropped from the sky on the wonderful Students Of Decay label "From the very first seconds of “Within/Without,” listeners familiar with the output of Aquarelle, the nom-de-plume of Madison, WI-based sound artist Ryan Potts, will find themselves in territory that is at once familiar and new. This opening salvo explodes into being with the surging, analog fuzz blooms and preternatural sense of rhythm that endeared many to …
Burning Off Impurities
Following soon after the critically praised Black Tar Prophecies collection on Important Records, Portland, Oregon's Grails return with their first proper studio album since 2004 release of Redlight. Burning Off Impurities - their debut for Temporary Residence Ltd. - makes good on the promise of those past releases in delivering an album that not only thrusts the group to new heights, but also significantly pushes the instrumental rock genre forward for the first time in nearly a decade. An incr…
Animalia Corolla
Most of us are living in an urban world, dominated by constant noise and contagious stress. Our ears are conditioned by this aggressive environment and have often lost the ability to perceive another discreet world surrounding us. It might be hidden but also swarming, vivid and incredibly musical. We are all able to prick up our ears to some birds chattering together, the wind shaking leaves, toads singing serenades or old spirits telling us their immemorial adventures…Since its creation in 2006…
Expressions East
Exact repro edition of this LP, originally issued in 1964. This is the limited edition colored vinyl version. "John Berberian is considered to be one of the finest oud virtuosos in the world. He has been featured in numerous concerts and dances throughout the United States, Canada, and South America. John is known for a series of successful Armenian and Middle Eastern recordings and has recorded with such major companies as: MGM, RCA, Roulette, Verve and Mainstream Records. Expressions Eas…
Kitchen
Kevin Drumm is a musician not only known as a one-man-orchestra exploring the boundaries of music, but also a star under the banner of inestimable Bocian Records label. This time we were granted with access to his kitchen. The LP is limited to 34 minutes, consisting of 2 pieces, originally recorded in 1996 yet fully remastered in 2012. Side one piece slowly opens a kitchen door. Smooth, equilibrious and loopy sound fractions that surpass those requirements ambient music is bound to meet. F…
Farewell Sorrow
VINYL VERSION! NOTE NEW PRICING! Alasdair Roberts is bidding farewell to his nom-de-musique, APPENDIX OUT. What once was Appendix Out is now & forever Alasdair Roberts. The broadest work in young Roberts' canon so far. Heavily steeped in the lineage of European folk, the words & music of "Farewell Sorrow" evoke a spirit of youth, an air of reckless abandon, a passion not meant to stay in this world.
Filtered Water
It's been three years since Rhode Island sound artist Geoff Mullen released his last album for the Type label, but he's hardly been taking it easy in the interim. After a few small-run cassette releases and a string of dates in Europe (both solo and in the Oxtirn trio with PAN's Eli Keszler and Ashley Paul) he found some time to get stranded in the woods and craft this beguiling long-form record. A mono recording of a multi-channel installation piece, Filtered Water is probably the most unu…
Say God
The 2xLP version comes in an old-style tip-on gatefold jacket with 8” x 10” insert and MP3 download coupon. In recent years, Higgs has released a number of solo outings that can only be described as the ultimate in isolation, worlds away from the hypnotic, communal rock of his band, Lungfish. Higgs follows up the 2007 album/book release Atomic Yggdrasil Tarot with his new double album Say God. Say God is an album of gospel songs and poems as presently received by this Daniel Higgs. Recorded …
Full Blast
Ass-whooping live set from the Full Blast trio, recorded in Cologne in 2006: Brotzmann’s work with electric bassist Marino Pliakas and drummer Michael Wertmuller extends his work with Last Exit in that it combines an almost metal/No Wave attack with a fluid non-stop dynamic and a feel of electric blues. Brotzmann has always favoured electric bassists – Bill Laswell, Massimo Pupillo – and there’s something about the unyielding aspect of the instrument that acts as a propulsive metal backbone for …
Surveillance
Painted Caves is Evan Caminiti. Surveillance is his debut LP under this alias. Primarily sourced from modular synthesizer, Surveillance compiles 7 tracks recorded over the last year, warped with cassette tapes and other digital tools. Beamed in like a scene from Videodrome, this sensual brand of dystopian psychedelia creates a grainy and tension filled narrative to get lost in. Much of Caminiti’s past work has inhabited a world of it’s own, but Surveillance is a direct response to life in an …
Ways Of Meaning
Ways of Meaning, Kyle Bobby Dunn’s new full-length album and the second release for Desire Path Recordings, is a treatise on the resonance of memory; an attempt to harness the finality of meaning as a shared experience.
Mainly arranged for guitar and organ, the six works contained herein offer a look into Dunn’s mind as an artist deeply concerned with time, memory, consequence, identity, and meaning. Each piece, while created from and inspired by very personal moments, represents a point o…
Journey from Anywhere
Compound Eye is Drew McDowall (formerly of Coil) and Tres Warren (Psychic Ills and Messages). Journey from Anywhere is their second album release following Origin of Silence, an art edition LP on The Spring Press label. This double LP features four sides of improvised electronics that lead the listener into the dark recesses of the duo's subterranean explorations. Each of these works move at a slow and considered pace, gradually unfolding into a transportative blur of dark psychedelic minim…
Rajasthan Street Music
"Swathed in hundreds of miles of snaking hinterland, the northwestern Indian state of Rajasthan is a giant canvas for the imagination of the wanderers it gives home to. Through the stark reaches of the vast Thar Desert, Rajasthan shares borders as well as bloodlines with the Pakistani provinces of Sindh and Punjab to the west and the Indian state of Gujarat to the south. The state's rough history and harsh environment is heavily reflected in the Rajasthani people and Marwari tribal culture; cent…