New Arrivals
Invisible ear
Two decades ago, saxophonist John Butcher abandoned his doctoral pursuits in theoretical physics to pursue a life in improvised music and has since become one of the genre’s leading instrumental and structural innovators. Butcher’s pursuit of extended techniques has yielded and continues to yield, as indicated by this most recent solo outing, a treasure trove of unfathomable timbral and dynamic possibilities for an instrument whose role in experimental music seems to consistently teeter o…
Aurona Arona
Urs Leimgruber (soprano saxophone, tenor saxophone), Alexander Schubert (electronics, violin), Oliver Schwerdt (piano, percussion, organ) and Christian Lillinger (drums, percussion). Recorded April 17th 2008, Leipzig.
Oidiconeg
re-issue of an obscure tape from the 80s originally titled Genocidio 20.Limited to 500 copies on Kubitsuri Tapes (Japan).
Manfauna
Miasma are a band comprised of various members of Guapo, Cathedral, Chrome Hoof and Elsa Drake all playing at the top of their form on this three-part sequence of instrumentals. The band court references to prog, the occult and Victoriana - at least that's what the press release is saying, and I'm not one to argue. The group's fearsome instrumental abilities are the real source of Miasma's strength, with sophisticated, thorough arrangements boasting some of the finest implementation of bassoon y…
(hail satan)
Carlos GALVEZ Taroncher (bassclarinet)-Magda MAYAS (piano)-Koen NUTTERS (acoustic bass)-Morten J. OLSEN (percussion). Recorded on 28 August 2006, Berlin.
Nowhere
1998 reissue, orginally released in 1984. A combination of spacey electro-pop, dub and dark avant-rock influences, Phantom Band is one of the most authentically weird, essential and yet surprisingly overlooked organisms orbiting the Can universe. This is the third and final album from the project, masterminded by Can drummer Jaki Liebezeit, featuring Dominik von Senger (Dunkelziffer, Damo Suzuki Band/Network) on guitar, Helmut Zerlett (e.g. Dunkelziffer, Unknown Cases) on keyboards and Sheldon A…
Blood In The Coffin
CD version: Leon Dufficy is primarily known as guitarist in the hippie-jam outfit, Hush Arbors, but now he steps into his own as the driving force behind Winter Drones. Sounding like the perfect combination of fuzzed-out ambient drift, shoegaze swirl and propulsive pop sensibilities, Winter Drones have slowly gained attention in their native U.K. with a handful of obscure CD-R/cassette releases and compilation appearances. Earlier this year, the band's debut album, Blood In The Coffin, ca…
Sax Pax for a Sax
Classical world-folk style by Moondog joined with jazz timbers by The London Saxophonic: the amazing and original collaboration between two distinct way of music.
Moss
Moss, is a live recording from a unique collaboration by sound artists/musicians Molly Berg, Olivia Block, Steve Roden and Stephen Vitiello. This was a midnight concert at the beautiful Trinity Cathedral in San Jose, CA which was part of the 01SJ Biennial. Olivia and Steve had performed solo sets on the previous nights. The final night was meant to be a duo with Molly and Stephen but the opportunity to play with musicians/friends who we admire so much called out for an invitation to play …
Die Harke Und Der Spaten - About The Love Life Of The Garden Too
Sven-ke Johansson : accordion, vocals. Axel Dörner : trumpet. Mats Gustafsson : saxophone. Per-ke Holmlander : tuba, trombone. Sten Sandell : piano. Matthias Bauer : double bass. Raymond Strid : percussion. Die Harke und Der Spaten [The Rake and the Spade] is a musical stage play with 8 scenes, for one singer/speaker and a musical ensemble. The tools - the rake and the spade - are presented during the performance in differente positions, serving as the starting point for the scenes, reco…
Privilegium Martyrii
Thick and spectral dark ambient, soaked with soft and flowing pads stratifications, wrapped in deep and penetrating low frequencies spires, enlightened by delicate and touching melodic inserts, profaned by echoes of reverberating metallic noises, clanging chains, circular mechanical movements, waves of indecipherable whispers, distant and suffering human voices... A great debut CD for Antikatechon, a project that showcases Davide Del Col's eclectic personality, already the unique mind of the Orn…
The Minimalism Of Erik Satie
"[...] Satie, the original "Enfant Terrible", was a strange man with strange thoughts that produced strange music with strange titles that don't seem so shocking today ("Jack-in-the-Box", "Driveling Preludes for a Dog", "Dried Embryos"), but considering that he was born two centuries ago, this bad boy of classical music deserves a very close look.Satie lived an unconventional life and demanded the same from those who attempted to sneak a peek into it. For example, his notes to Vexations r…
Consequenz
Commercial Schnitzler? How quickly, how prematurely are opinions and judgements bandied about when an artist suddenly changes the form of his work. Conrad Schnitzler fell under such a cloud when, after 1978, his songs, for a time at least, did not exceed the catchy compactness of pop songs, while their harmonies and rhythms seemed to be drifting towards pop. Produced by Peter Baumann (Tangerine Dream) the Con (1978) album and the Auf dem schwarzen Kanal 12" EP (1980) ushered in this phase, …
Bell Trove Spools
Northern Spy is proud to present two of John Butcher’s most recent experiments in moving sound waves through space. On Bell Trove Spools we hear Butcher in two distinct situations: Richmond Hall, a Houston art gallery housing a permanent Dan Flavin collection that has been compared to a bowling alley; and the high-ceilinged marble room in Brooklyn which is the new home to Issue Project Room. Butcher is heard on his two saxes of choice, the soprano and the tenor, and suspended in space, fluid, ch…
Oltre
The best 12k/LINE release in ages - dark, Lynchian eroded tape-loops and analogue menace. ESSENTIAL PURCHASE! (boomkat) "The Transparence dubplate, developed at O ' in Milan, Italy, works within the physical limitations of the vinyl medium, employing the object as sound source and also sound medium, to become an instrument in its own right. Using the non-linear acoustics of the gallery at O', the dubplate was recorded, and later cut to disc in Berlin, at very low volume. This ephemeral audi…
Eight Lost Tracks
Oral label can be quite proud: they dug up all the works by Austria's Monoton, the baby of Konrad Becker and released them before on CD. Monoton's music was its time ahead: minimalist pulses based on analogue synthesizers, thus predating techno, glitch, clicks & cuts, and what's better: it still sounds good. The two previous releases were officially released back then, but the eight pieces were never released, save for two on an EP and a compilation. The pieces were recorded between 1981 a…
Stasis
Zbeen is an electro-acoustic project by Gianluca Favaron and Ennio Mazzon. Zbeen’s improvisational approach is developed from the human-machine paradigm which is represented by the interaction with digital instruments specifically designed and developed for this project. K-Frame, Zbeen's debut EP, was released by Ripples in January 2012. Unlike K-Frame, which was developed as a sonic counter-part to the linear algebra concept of an ordered set of ‘k’ linearly-independent vectors, Stasis elabo…
AIA
This is the first CD issue of Grouper's 2011 self released two part album subtitled 'Dream Loss' and 'Alien Observer,' comprised of songs written and recorded over the last four years. A chronological order informs the thematic trajectory of the dual release. 'Dream Loss' is the first album and is a collection of older songs, while 'Alien Observer' is mostly made of newer songs. Each is meant to stand solidly on its own, and also as a satellite in the other's system, subjects on either side of t…
Watershed
If the three compositions proposed by Denis Fournier have already been recorded, they merit to be here as resurgences, like scenarios encouraging the freedom of transformation without which free interpretation is nothing. “I often say that I don’t make improvised music, but that I improvise music. In other words, I put together there and then elements of my life, of my history, of my culture…” In other words, no structure commands the action. Every structure opens to the action (to sharing) whic…
Middle Eastern Rock
An inspired fusion of Middle Eastern rhythms and psychedelia resulted in this the gorgeous album by accomplished oud player John Berberian and his troop of skilled musicians. First released on Verve/Forecast in 1969 this exotic album features music based on traditional themes from Turkey, Armenia, Greece, Arabia and North Africa blended with the terrific improvised energy of psychedelia. So what you end up with here is bustling bazaars and scorched sands passed through the prism of the lysergic …