New Arrivals
Voices Of Packaged Souls
Debut release on this new imprint brought to you by FInders Keepers, Pre-Cert Home Entertainment and Boomkat, "Voices Of Packaged Souls" was the first album recorded by Suzanne Ciani, originally pressed up as a private edition of just 50 copies and now available in this limited run of just 1000 housed in screenprinted silver foil sleeves faithful to the original pressing** Dead-Cert is a brand new reissue venture with a focus on genuinely rare archival curiosities of early computer music, …
The Wyrd Meme
A quartet of new songs from the ever-wonderful Alasdair Roberts - a follow-up to his long-player Spoils, released earlier in the year. The tone is carefully poised between staunchly traditional folk values and more modern arrangement styles; though Roberts' fingerpicking and unaffected delivery are faithful to the genre's purist leanings, there's nothing conventional about the songs' segmented structures or the often very minimalist arrangements. It's quite strange to hear such a seemingly old-f…
Don't Ollie On Thin Ice!
Hand-numbered edition of only 100 copies LP from Belgian visual artist Dennis Tyfus’s Vom Grill project: two tracks of non-spazz electronics, keyboard and profoundly deformed tongue, moving from scraping, skittering sound werks that come over like Blood Stereo play John Cage’s cartridge music to a fantastic fat, doomy synth solo that makes like Heldon hymning Lucifer. Less madman and a lot more moody than you might expect, this makes for a consistently bent atmosphere from start to finish.…
Always Wrong
f you're wondering whether record labels still matter, consider the case of Wolf Eyes. Their last two widely distributed albums, 2004's Burned Mind and 2006's Human Animal, came out on Sub Pop and got lots of media attention, even landing the band on the cover of The Wire. Three years later, Wolf Eyes return with Always Wrong, a follow-up of sorts after reams of smaller-run releases. It came out on Hospital in May, and I can't find a single review beyond a few blog entries and tweets. Even The W…
Smokin\'
We had heard a couple cassette outings by this Bloomington young-bloomer over the last 4-6 months and each one hit us better than the last but nothing had prepped us for Ettinger’s most recent evolution into neon skyline chase scene soundtracker and that’s part of what makes it so amazing. For Smokin’ he wrangled together a small posse of close comrades (enter The Heat) and tracked a sick session of smoky synth themes, Corvette noir moods, echo dystopia, faded voices, and sleazy Miami sax. The A…
Connected
Presenting a new collaboration featuring Oren Ambarchi on guitar, the electronics of Robin Fox, and both performing on various other instruments. The music on this album came about as the result of the two being asked to co-compose the soundtrack for a new production by renowned Australian contemporary dance company Chunky Move for their Connected production. 'Chunky Move's artistic director Gideon Obarzanek was drawn to the organic and deeply musical qualities of Ambarchi's work and the digital…
July 19, 2006
may 2009 release: label-less lp release (“private,” if you will) covering the first ever duo set between myself & geoff mullen, recorded in concert at the brendan murray-curated “uppercase sound #2” event @ pa’s lounge, somerville, ma, 02143, usa, on july 19th, 2006 ...the music is entirely improvised, with geoff sticking largely to a suitcase-electronics-based setup (although he does provide some fine guitar & pedal alterations throughout) & myself to the doepfer (ditto guitar & korg guitar-syn…
Harmonia & Eno \'76
AWESOME!! Fans of ambient music and Brian Eno will want to watch for a new album on the new Amazing Sounds label, Harmonia & Eno ‘76 Remixes. The album features remixes of tracks from the classic album Tracks & Traces by Shackleton, Appleblim & Komonazmuk. 2 tracks 12"
LA Vampires & Zola Jesus
Easily one of the releases of the year so far, finally available on limited edition vinyl* Ghostly goings on from gothic psych queen Zola Jesus and kindred spirit LA Vampires (the current guise of Amanda Brown from Pocahaunted), who collaborate across this killer new mini album. 'Bone Is Bloodstone' rumbles into motion with those familiarly smudged out, indecipherable vocals and evaporating drum machines but there's a heavy bass groove and some ghoulish melodic developments set to balance …
Shining Skull Breath
This ultra limited, and long out of print cd-r from 2007, finally available again, now as a super swank (and still quite limited) lp...Another gorgeous sonic transmission from right here in the Bay Area, from AQ fave Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, the man behind Tarentel, and the Root Strata label. Those familiar with Cantu-Ledesma's music know that he usually speakers in hushed whispers, breathy and breathless, soft sonic shimmers allowed to drift like billowy clouds into your ears. But here, C-L …
Kokning
"Norway's Bjorn Torske returns with his fourth studio album 'Kokning'. Opening on a playful note with a slow-building title track, Torske strums a lone acoustic guitar against a background of shimmering synths setting the scene for a highly engaging piece of work. Throughout the course of the album a wide palette of genres are taken in and adapted to the Skrangle-House style (an open ended take on house music stemming from the Oslo nightclub 'Skansen'), and dub looms large over much of the music…
III
I don't care how many goddamn cute hobo bands there are out there right now. Not two runny shits. There's something Hank IV knows that few other current "of interest" bands realize, and it's a painfully simple thing: guitars were meant to sound like this, not that (pick something). That's as plainly as it can be put. This is twin-guitar punk rock in a class of its own, driving more than dueling and hot-sauce-free. I'd say "power with taste" but then I'd have to kill myself. I will say that…
Oh Me Oh My... The Way The Day Goes By The Sun Is Setting Dogs A
To say Devendra Banhart is unique is an absurd understatement. When I first heard the voice of this completely unknown, precociously talented 21-year-old songwriter, I could not believe it. His occasionally warbling falsetto is alternately bizarre, comical, and often a little frightening. Coupled with his advanced finger-picking guitar style - which itself often veers schizophrenically from gentle grooves into jolting, non-rhythmic stabs and weird harmonic flights of chaos -- and the wildly surr…
Ghost with chains
Long-running Twin Cities horsepower trio Daughters Of The Sun have been subtly chugging out their faded-tattoo spirit-in-the-sky psych exhaust for at least half a decade now but we didn’t catch the drift till March ’09, when we got to witness a packed post-midnight smoke-soaked Minneapolis loft set and waved our lighter with the masses. Ghost With Chains is their third official full-length (not including some EPs and a killer split) and it’s as beautifully moon-burnt and highway-swept as anythin…
Triangles
There's something almost religious about this Charlatan (Brad Rose) LP, its narrative arc swinging from light to dark and back again. From the opening chords of "Lime Beauty," we're awash in polarized-lens glinting twilight, fluorescent skies over the water. "Trace Blue Outlines" is trance-like and reflective, with long, arpeggiated figures chasing each other skyward in a fugue. Darkness creeps in around the edges of "Vodka Rocks," with almost post-rock moodiness bringing the side to a cl…
Copenhagen Dreams
Copenhagen Dreams is director Max Kestner’s documentary film portrait of Denmark’s capital. It’s a film about the physical surroundings that are part of shaping our lives. About the buildings we wake up in, the front doors we walk out of, the streets we traverse. It is also a film about how the way we live our lives affects our physical surroundings. About the places we dream of and the walls onto which we scratch the names of our loved ones, before it’s too late.It focuses on the city as a phys…
Henzai
Tokyo-based guitarist/singer Hisato Higuchi presents his fourth full-length and first LP release. Henzai is Higuchi at his most bare. Each song appears like a spectral poem -- sewn together with hushed electricity and whispers. This recording is wholly intimate, recorded in seclusion, and washes over the listener like a hazy, day-break dream. Higuchi splits these 12 torch-songs between slow-motion improvisations and the composed, yet each is sung with a mix of beautiful wordless/Japanese languag…
Danza Meccanica - Italian Synth Wave 1982 - 1987
Gorgeous collection of rare and early italian wave releases from 1982 - 1987 selected by Danza and with intro text by Fred Ventura in a limited run of 500 vinyl albums (hand numbered) it includes 2 inserts, LP cover on hand-made serigraphy. Highly recommended.
Particles
'Imagine the moment before the origin of the Universe, when nothing yet existed. According to the standard theory, our universe sprang into existence as 'singularity', a zone of infinite density, which is also what is thought to exist at the core of the 'black hole'. The result of its expansion is what we call the 'Universe' and it is also what this album is all about. The gate was opened one night in May, in a basement of Northampton, Ma. by Paul Flaherty on saxophone and Weasel Walter on drums…
Safiyya
Like a true psychedelic experience, one that if you've ever had, you'll know what we mean, it presents you with a fixed length window that opens into another possible perspective of our lumbering existence. Imagine 500 milligrams administered via an eye dropper filled with mercury and you're on your way. Born of a correspondence between two fellows entrenched in parallel explorations of the unknowable and imagined, there's a mystery to the source of the sounds contained in these grooves; …