New Arrivals
Kampanerura
Kampanerura is the name of a boy appearing in the children's story Night on the Galactic Railroad by Kenji Miyazawa (1896-1933), Japanese poet and author of children's literature. A boy with pure soul transmigrates and becomes a dissipated man around a trip to the bottom in Asia. From accompanying text by Masayoshi Urabe 'What are my legs on? What are my feet standing on? Sand? I feel something sharp and pointed! And a gentle breeze where am I? The sea? I feel it flowing! I've crossed ove…
Anro
A narrow path of safety extending through the gloom, its edges bleeding into the fearful zones of disorder and formlessness that enclose it. Paths create borders, they limn the known from the unknown, the clean from the unclean, the citizen from the exile, the present from the past. But while paths create boundaries, they themselves are ambivalent, neither here nor there, neither now nor then. The act of making a path where none existed always involves the subjugation of the unknown and f…
Vivian & Ondine
A brand new album from one of the most revered and acclaimed ambient composers of our time, Vivian & Ondine takes the form of a single, three-quarter hour piece, once again constructed from William Basinski's signature style of tape loop manipulation. While the narrative ebb and flow is largely pinned to a single tape fragment, Basinski merged a further "dozen or so" that sunk into the mix in just the right way, adding to the aura of fluctuation and continuous evolution that's so essential to th…
Courant.Air
It is the continuation of a body of work intertwining instrumental and electronic music following the acclaimed 2004-2008 work les arbres (Mention, Prix Ars Electronica 2009). The mixture this time is more edgy : a rich and complex electronic sound composition alongside the folk inspired guitar played by Simon Trottier (member of the extraordinary haunted blues band Timber Timbre). After 2 albums of improvised folktronica with Simon Trottier, Nicolas Bernier decided to explore that singu…
Experiments \'80-\'82
self-issued cd collecting two early 80s cassette-only releases (“quiz party” & “life in video city”) by richard bone, both tipped by the mutant sounds crew a few years back resulting in something of a renewed interest in this otherwise obscure figure in the 70s / 80s “minimal synth” wave - jumping back & forth between noisy, arpeggiated sequences & more atemporal modes (i can certainly hear the tod dockstader influence throughout the “quiz party” pieces) this is in many ways the perfect disc for…
Instance
Thembi Soddell's second solo release continues her exploration of dynamics, abstracting various sound sources, from field recordings to instrument textures, into sonic interpretations of her dreams.
Gaycre (2)
Xavier Charles : clarinet, Michel Doneda : saxophone, Jean Pallandre : microphones. Following the first meeting in 1997, they went back to the same places to record again an incredible meeting of soundscape !
Cellos
The association between Ulrich Mitzlaff and Miguel Mira promises an unforeseeable sound meeting. The specific, personal and different ways of their distinguished expression is the base for their very dynamic and interactive music. They create sounds where the improvisation moves with great fluency between the establishing of textures and abstract musical ideas and the switching in the musical discourse to singular, rhythmic and melodic affirmations. They construct the sonar explorations using th…
Circle Snare
His given electronic anatomy of drum machine, microphones, tapes, & MSP folded out of their hard accustomed formations, breaking out into a more cogent & vital arsenal. A finely detailed & dimensional evolution of an already unique voice.
Shuffle
Limited copies back in stock. It's hard to believe that it's been almost a year since Rutger Zuydervelt helped nail our jaws to the floor with his exceptional album 'Dauw'. It used to be that there was a new Machinefabriek album almost every week (sometimes two or three) but since 'Dauw' it seems like Rutger's slowed down and withdrawn into a self-imposed silence . And that's no bad thing - 'Shuffle' is his first self-released record in some time and it shows in the near-obsessive quality of the…
Gratuitous Abuse
The London based improvising string trio Barrel of Alison Blunt on violin, Ivor Kallin on violin & viola, and Hannah Marshall on cello, all members of London Improvisers Orchestra and performers at the 2007 Freedom of the City. "These three musicians have been performing in various combinations with others on the London improvising scene for several years. As well as the numerous small groups they have participated in, all three are members of the London Improvisers Orchestra. About six years a…
Homunculus
Debut disc from the new collaborative project between Nathan Bowles (Black Twig Pickers/Spiral Joy Band) and Lisa Cameron (Venison Whirled). A real odd one this, lots of rattling and scraping of percussive objects creating 3 tracks of abstract improvised surreal sonic explorations. The sound is matched by what I can only describe as the weirdest sleeves I have every had the joy of releasing (and we've had some weird ones), but this one is far out, the guy at my local print shop looked baffled wh…
Filmworks XXIII: El General
Eleven cues recorded for a striking documentary focusing on the life of controversial Mexican dictator Plutarco Elias Calles who was called everything from a nun-burner to the father of modern Mexico. Beautiful and dramatic, the music is scored for guitar, marimba, accordion/piano and bass and subtly draws upon Mexican, Spanish, minimalist and soundtrack traditions. Zorn's fifth film score in as many months is a pure delight. Moody and exotic music for a creative and revealing film dealing with …
Brahms’ Deutsche Volkslieder
"Only one face": Following their price-winnig recording Schubertlieder, the Tyrolean Musicbanda Franui have now taken up Johannes Brahms' German Folk Songs.
42 Vexations
16 page booklet including Cage's Place In the Reception of Satie by Matthew Shlomowitz. Erik Satie's 1893 Vexations is musique d'ameublement - literally, "furniture music", the phrase coined by Satie in 1917, where he identifies sound as drapes, tiling, wallpaper - items belonging to the environment and changing it simply by being in it, by actually becoming elements of the space. This recording is the second instalment in a series of furniture music (after Marcel Duchamp's Musical Erratum), and…
My Life On The Plains
Lee Hyla is a composer of rare power and versatility whose work combines the complexity of atonal classical concert music with the energy of experimental jazz, rock and improvised music. Truly part of the American tradition, his work is imaginative, fresh, and embraces a widerange of diverse influences. Lee Hyla’s third Tzadik CD presents a collection of recent works large and small. Colorful and startling pieces filled with surprises and wild bursts of energy. This is a fabulous and varied prog…
Killing HF Harlow
Terrapin is Giovanni Lami & Shaun McAlpine. An improv duo based on real time processing field recordings, analog instruments and digital sounds, all played and processed live. This work comes from some recording sessions in Giovanni’s Studio. Later subtlety edited without any overdubs, just choosing the most suitable parts, noticing something evolve from the session, forming a solid arrangement.
The fundamental idea behind the project is vivisection, holding an historical vivisectio…
Somewhere Out There
Luca Di Mattei is one of the Afe resident artists since the early days of the label. During the years he had several releases under four different aliases: Leeza, Hendy Van Morris, Jabba and Bill Catez. Leeza is his most well-known and prolific incarnation. Generated using laptop computer technology, Leeza's music has its main roots in what was once called Intelligent Techno, and is clearly inspired by the great records published during the '90s by labels such as Warp, Rephlex, Skam, etc.After t…
Book of Beyond
"Ben Reynolds is one of the newer voices from the same UK scene that includes Ashtray Navigations and many of the VHF celebrities (Sunroof!, Vibracathedral Orchestra, Richard Youngs, etc.) It should be of little surprise then that Book of Beyond fits very nicely among the recordings of those other artists -- noise/junk drone. As in his previous recordings, this at times dissolves into more acoustic offerings, but the Fahey influence appears to be mostly gone, and what remains in the quie…
Caves
Riccardo Dillon Wanke’s Caves was composed and recorded in 2006 in Alfama (historical district of Lisbon, Portugal) using acoustic and electric guitars, saxophones and natural sound elements starting from pure radical improvisation evolving into the investigation of drones and static and looped music related to minimalism. At the center of these works are the binaural beats in musical composition, the results lying between classical composition, minimalistic improvisation and a "folk" sensitivit…