New Arrivals
Old Punch Card
Taking inspiration from early music concrete and electronic music, the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, Nuno Canavarro, Raymond Scott, David Behrman, and free improvisation, Old Punch Card is a beautifully noisy, jagged, yet stately album of synthesizer music. The ideas and implementation of Old Punch Card (the album title alluding to the electronic, faintly mechanic origins of the music) were the result of an entirely new challenge: to do something completely different from anything else he's…
A Gourd of Gold
2013 release "From the time we started Latitudes, we’ve held a secret wish list of bands that we intended to lure into our studio. We’ve cut a major notch in our bedpost by finally scoring with Arbouretum, a band that meets universal approval at Latitudes HQ. Arbouretum offer up four cover versions of the brilliant Gordon Lightfoot, the oft-overlooked Canadian singer-songwriter who helped define the folk-rock sound of the Sixties and Seventies. The highlight of the session is unsurprisingly the …
A history of every one
'A History of Every One' by Bill Orcutt is an album of songs: minstrel songs, holiday songs, hymns, marches, cowboy songs, Disney songs, work songs, delta blues. The original tunes themselves are nothing special, well known, but not particularly well-regarded. Most would be filler on a mid-60's Doris Day or Burl Ives LP. What Orcutt does with them however is remarkable: expanding upon techniques developed on 2011's 'How the Thing Sings' and incorporating ideasforged since his recording of 'The S…
On Onions
On Onions is a photographic study of onions by Israeli-born artist Elad Lassry (born 1977). Characteristically highlighting the spectrum of hues and shapes for the vegetable, Lassry’s selected taxonomy includes sections on red, yellow and white onions, each of which possesses its own distinct taste and benefits. On Onions is Lassry’s first artist’s book, and the work will exist only in book form; it is at once wry, refreshing and disorienting in its biology workbook style, which makes fru…
Mirrors & tides
Eyes closed, ears wide open, we are given freedom to dream the void. Sweeping, intricate, sometimes ominous yet always exuding a warmth and depth of emotion, The Stargazer's Assistant produces pure cinema of sound. For the new EP, David J. Smith (Guapo) is joined by Circle vocalist Mika Rttö', who sings on the heart-breaking 'Coral Butterfly'. David also had the honour of playing the late Finnish jazz drummer Edward Vesala's Sound & Fury collection of unique metal percussion. Ancient fore…
Coin coin chapter two: Mississippi Moonchile
2013 release. Mississippi Moonchile is the much-anticipated new installment of Matana Roberts' unique and forward-looking project and it finds Roberts conjuring some of the most nuanced, thoughtful and substantial American liberation music of the 21st century. Mississippi Moonchile was developed for an intimately woven New York jazz sextet and represents the next leap forward in Roberts' iconoclastic and complex project of memory and recuperation, where historical and contemporary musical tropes…
Kassidat: Raw 45s from Morocco
Kassidat: Raw 45s from Morocco is a full-length LP that features six extended tracks from the golden age of the Moroccan record industry. After Morocco gained its independence in 1956, Moroccan-owned record labels sprouted and flourished in Casablanca. The inexpensive 45 rpm format allowed the record companies to release thousands of songs during the 1960s, creating a snapshot of the raw and hypnotic Berber music that thrived throughout Morocco. Powerful traditional styles were still aliv…
Caim in Bird Form
Opal Tapes' visionary bossman Stephen Bishop synthesises spellbinding post-techno ecologies on his debut slab of wax as Basic House. 'Caim In Bird Form' is an engrossing refinement of the arcane, buckled structures and textures best heard on his 'I'm Not A Heaven Man' album and an excellent split with Prostitutes for Blowing Up The Workshop. It's a sound that was conceived in relative isolation, yet feels intrinsically plugged into the zeitgeist and highly aware of fringe actions in the wake of …
Isometrie sonore
Postface by M.B. - An isometric sound ineluctably holds a thematic notion which generalizes that of the rigid motion of noise, combining with a psychometric and cacophonous object. Formally, it is a modulatory function between two metric spaces preserving their silent distances. In the example shown here, isometry moves along electronic pathways and captivates the listener's mind through rotations and reflections in plane or in spatial sound, maintaining the geometric concepts of experimental su…
Birth/Speed/Merging
The Pyramids' psychedelic Afro-jazz masterpiece finally lands thanks to Disko B. Originally cut in 1975 before they disbanded, 'Birth/Speed/Merging' marks a highpoint of the group's production values and was their last recording together. Since then the LP's achieved cult status for its celebratory fusion of carnivalesque groove with Sun-Ra-like cosmic vibes and progressive values; a worldly and entirely enchanting sound blessed with a real tangible sorta magic. The one to check is 'Black Man An…
Ritual
gorgeous LP of this obscure live recording, an ethereal vortex of electric moon-sounding mandolin and slow bass (luca massolin), spacy keyboards (david vanzan), primitive astral soprano sax and voice (virginia genta). atmospheres for the end of the earthly. handmade collage cover art. limited edition of 280 numbered copies.
Portland Arse
A true man of the world guitarist C Joynes travelled extensively through Pakistan, Sudan, Kenya, Uganda and Eritrea. Not surprisingly his playing is influenced by African music, especially on these recordings with the Ensemble which add a bunch of exotic instruments to his English folkmelodies for maximum alien ritual effect.
Music for Sick Queers
The German Shepherds, formed by Sandy Stark and Stephen Scheatzle in Nov. 1981, released a three song ep in early "82 with "Booty Jones" -- to child molester and kidnapper Kenneth Parnell; "I Adore You" -- an offering of prayer and submission and "Message from JJ" -- a rousing sermon by Peoples Temple chief Rev. Jim Jones. Later that year a dub version of "I Adore You" and "The Earthquake Has Come" appeared on the "You'll Hate This Record, Record" compilation lp. In 1983 the Shepherds began work…
The Skipper at Home
Jazz-man Henry Franklin, widely respected for his service to the finest jazz players, brought that ineffable quality called soulfulness into play when he made his first record for producer George Porter at Black Jazz, The Skipper. Not unexpectedly, his follow-up affair titled The Skipper at Home teems with the same jaunty uplift. In sync with Franklin's musical spirit on the second recording are returnees Charles Owens on saxophone, Oscar Brashear on trumpet and Kenny Climax on guitar along wi…
Dawn In 2 Dimensions
After the dark conceptual ambience of Beyond the 4th Door, the members of Eternal Tapestry decided the time was right to do an album embracing their live show - blistering psych rock filled with lyrical guitar soloing and a caveman approach to rhythm, an oddly euphoric state where melancholia is blasted by ecstatic noise. Compiled from a variety of sessions at Tapestry Space throughout the spring of 2011 (some of this material first found a home on the two fall tour tapes), this set of so…
Song Islands Vol. 2
Song Islands Vol. 2, released under the Mount Eerie moniker as opposed to Microphones like the original Song Islands compilation, is a sizable compendium of songs covering from the 2002 release of Song Islands to the present day. Coming in at a total of 31 tracks, Song Islands Vol. 2 continues Phil Elverum’s powerful and decidedly exploratory musical style. The compilation maintains an incredible sense of intimacy, even when the vocals get choral, which is on the precipice of being the rule as o…
Make It Real
Wait, this is the new Pocahaunted album cover? Gone may be the days of cassette cases featuring creepy collages and hand-dyed bags with feathers attached, but this is something else entirely. I mean, there’s a parrot with blue Ray-Bans, a giant dollar sign, a “He’s on fire!” NBA Jam-style basketball…What is going on? After the shock of the cover art, I waded into the unfamiliar soup that waited within. From the opening thrums of “Touch You”, the lo-fi recording aesthetic seemed to be held …
Fur Paul Klee
For Sven-Ake Johansson, the capricious and mercurial character of Paul Klee's texts is not a flaw, but a quality in its own right. His thirteen settings capture precisely this quality of the texts. Johansson's clear diction, his distinct, almost exaggerated elocution, imbues Klee s texts with a lapidary air without stripping them of their personal and intimate nature.
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…
Ritual Totemic Stone
By now, the significance of Sam McKinlay's extensive body of work is undeniable. After having begun his mapping of the depths of monomania, fetish, addiction, and vice, in the mid-1990s with his flagship project, The Rita, McKinlay briefly halted his work in the early 2000s. Though it was unforeseeable at the time, McKinlay's return to substantial recording output and live performances around 2004 would quickly and permanently alter the landscape of Harsh Noise. The Rita became one of the most …