New Arrivals
Fancies, forbearance
Fancy: a 17th century term generally describing a composition in which form is of secondary importance. Fancies were usually contra-puntal and in several sections. (The Oxford Dictionary of Music)Fancies (2009) served to reconcile previously unsettled material, based upon a scheme that condones disparity between its constituent parts. In the period since its completion, and subsequent issue on cassette, Fancies has come to represent an antithesis to what I originally termed ‘a work in parenthesi…
Homemade Gloomy Pop
Finally available as a double CD, this collection is dedicated to Endless Nostalgia, one of the cult-band par excellence of the Italian electronic New Wave of the Eighties. Better known for the single "Me & My Alter Ego" released in 1984, this electro-pop duo from Verona, Northern Italy, produced a large number of cassette releases that have become very sought-after items nowadays. This generous and well-structured collection is a testament to the quality of the formation that was centered on Lu…
Coda (For WK)
The new CD-EP (clocking in at 20 minutes exactly) from Stephan Mathieu is a coda to A Static Place (2011, 12k), created with his highly focused setup of two mechanical-acoustic gramophones and computer. Coda (For WK) is dedicated to the legendary “quiet” pianist Wilhelm Kempff, whose 1927 recordings of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 26 Les Adieux from a double 12” 78RPM set on Brunswick were used as input for an autogenerative process. Mathieu’s process emphasizes the archaic beauty and texture of…
Mountains Among Us
This year sees the eruption of the Volcano with a myriad of releases leaving the town folk covered in a fine and mysterious silt of musical entropy. The limited release of "Mountains" finds our boy’s spelunking the creepiest of dream spawned caves, excavating crystalline fragments along the way, which are then set in beautiful mental jewelry appropriate for any formal occasion. Arpeggiated blurs and disinterred voices snap, crackle and pop as an unnamed rusted hulk is slowly pushed across an eve…
Field Recordings 1969/70
Field recordings made at Mariental-Dorf (Germany) 1970, Göteborg 1970 (Sweden), Wolfsburg 1969 (Germany) Sonnenberg, Harz 1970 (Germany) with a Uher mono recorder and a microphone Sennheiser MD 421 N
The Baroque Atrium
The Preservation label presents The Baroque Atrium, the second full-length album from Seattle's Panabrite. Panabrite is the solo recording project for Norm Chambers, who over a short time has grown a catalog of works showcasing a natural empathy for tapestries of sound that are eclectic, intricate and immediate all at once. Marking new ground in pursuit of pre-digital synthesis, Chambers' work as Panabrite is a shining light among those currently finding inspiration connecting sound explora…
A thousand mountains
To start with, we've always commended Japan's Doubtmusic label for the handsome packaging job that each one of their digipack cd releases invariably receives. This one, though, we'd probably be inclined to buy just 'cause of the especially cool cover art alone! Done by one Tomoo Gokita, the cover suggests an arched window in a brightly patterned wall, looking out on (a photo of) some majestic snow-capped alpine mountain (the Matterhorn, is it?). But in front of the "window", the corpse-painted v…
Boolean Blues
ASESOME NEW RELEASE! Josh Hanson is another of Portland, Oregon’s underappreciated sons. Having come up through the ranks of long-time, long-forgotten faves Hochenkeit, he also spent time as a member of The Davis Redford Trio. But Hanson’s path diverges into a totally different sphere nowadays, spinning solo modular synth exploits to the stars. Influenced not just by the likes of Subotnick and Cluster but also various types of Eastern sounds, Hanson is looking forward, trying to find new pa…
Invisible
A new series designed by Clare Cooper. Xavier Charles is an active clarinetist in the world of improvised music, known from a variety of constellations and ensembles like Dans les arbres and Contest of Pleasures. This is his first solo release for Sofa. Listening and perception are important elements in Invisible, which consists of both solo clarinet and field recordings. A total openness to moment and utterance characterizes his sound explorations, where we in a poetic fashion, are led to a pla…
Home
The Preservation label presents Home, the third album from Olan Mill from Hampshire in the United Kingdom. Olan Mill is the recording project of composer and producer Alex Smalley, who to-date has received rapturous acclaim for his work that holds a sublime measure between the realms of modern neo-classical composition and ambience. On Home, Smalley has mined his most expansive territory yet to create a thrillingly evocative and deeply felt body of work. The tender clusters of sound that ha…
Tidings / Amesthyst Waves
Trying to put the last 15 years of music into context, you’d be hard pressed to get anyone to agree on a single thing. If anything, this period has been a collective convergence of all things cool-sounding: naïve experimentalism, academic composition, art-rock synthesis, electronic nihilism/flagellation, and, well, everything else. Mark McGuire could muddy anyones interpretation of the contemporary canon with his buddies in the triadic mega-unit, Emeralds, his collaborative outings in Sun Wa…
Night maps
Since the release of Saddleback’s acclaimed 2004 debut Everything’s A Love Letter, Tony has found increasing demand for his touch behind the recording desk. Tony’s studio is housed in his Kangaroo Valley residence on the south coast of New South Wales. Found inside are all sorts of instruments including various guitars, percussion makers, horns, a clarinet, a double bass, piano and a specially-fashioned drum set. Having arranged and played these on other peoples’ work – most notably for Sydney’s…
Krungthep Archives
"After the post-industral / power-electronics 'diversions' of his recent collaboration with Pierpaolo Zoppo / Mauthausen Orchestra in From Unhealthy Places, and Forgotten Realm, the 'second chapter' of the Hall of Mirrors projects with Andrea Marutti / Amon in dark ambient 'territories', Nimh (Giuseppe Verticchio) returns as a 'solo' artist in his newest Krungthep Archives, rediscovering the sounds of his oriental ethnic instruments, collected in he Far-East, mainly in Thailand. The recordings o…
Global K.O.
Sprung aus den Wolken have teamed up with Berlin based electro duo Film 2 to record a new album. The result is a mix of Renault Schubert's cool electro pop tunes and Kiddy Citny's and Betty la Gachette's vocals sung in French, English and German. A more than welcome return after a far too long pause for theose German pioneers. "The ten tracks of the CD span from funky electro industrialism to ambient cinematic experimentations (like "Push here" or "Nous irons aux bois") passing though electro 80…
Cracked Refraction
Cracked Refraction ties its complex knots with infectious vigor and a predilection for playfulness. Wrack’s melodies are slithering and serpentine, and the music is built of smaller segments assembled in what can seem a slapdash manner, with all sorts of jutting ends and unexpected collisions. What Bruckmann’s done, though, is intentional, placing his players on different planes, with straight lines failing to meet, runs of notes ricocheting at impossible angles, and expected avenues folding in …
The unknown knowns
Klaus Ellerhusen Holm, alto saxophone & clarinet. Tor Haugerud, drums & percussion. Kim Myhr, guitars & objects. Martin Taxt, tuba. Muringa navigates playfully in a polarized world of opposites. Between speed and tranquility, industry and flora, violence and tenderness, noise and silence, chaos and order; Muringa gives the listener the hegelian third choice. The group consists of four of the most active improvising musicians from Norway. All occupied with other SOFA-projects such as Mural…
Yaho-Niwa
Masami Akita alias Merzbow, the king of noise music, the defender of the vegan cause, the animals lover is coming back with a cosmic and devastating magma, a spinning metal tapestry-work with loops of echoes in a whale rutting way. As usual, to be listened to very loudly. Mix realized at Munemihouse in Tokyo during the month of April in 2011.
Redsuperstructure
"simple sonic events are unfolding themselves and evoke the sound of an orffean children ensemble. pleasant and strange noises join a bass foundation that recreates the ground shaking subsonic waves of mid-nineties drum&bass. it's like a drum major meets a tibetan monk. all is good in the noosphere - with "redsuperstructure" robert lippok's new record "redsuperstructure" is based on the spectacular set he performed at raster-noton electric campfire at villa massimo in september 2010. afte…
Language of the Dards
WhisPers for WoLves is the solo pysch/noise/folk project of Melissa Moore. The musician, experimental instrument builder, installation/sound artist, and sculptor based in Baltimore,MD. "Language of the Dards" is a multi-part series of pieces developed around the text/teachings/songs of Indian Yogi, Milarepa made of three long recordings of voice/finger-pickin guitar, nepalese oboe, and electronics. The album comes in a hand-assembled gatefold sleeve.
Wege
Wege translates as 'path' and it's a fitting title for the latest rendering from master percussionist and experimental composer Andrea Belfi. The albums' four pieces act as orientation points through some imaginary sonic landscape. Wege is Belfi's forth LP (the first with Room40), and stems entirely from compositions completed at two artist-in-residence projects in Austria (Hotel Pupik) and in Brussels (Q-O2 Werkplatz). The album is built around a cyclic electro-acoustic system, through which Be…