New Arrivals
Archive #1
The IMO is a very large improvisors ensemble, founded in september 2010, that usually gather about 35 musicians per concert, from all switzerland and beyond. From the, expected, mess of the first concerts emerged a collective consciousness and involvement from the impressive number of musicians included in this ambitious projet. After a year - and 7 concerts - 40 of them met during 3 day during the 2011 summer, marking a sensitive step in the orchestra progression. Working deeply a certai…
Drape
12k kicks off its 11th year with a new release that takes the label down new sonic pathways. Caught between the organic and electronic minimalism that 12k is known for and the unconventional Japanese pop musings and songwriting style of Happy, Moskitoo’s Drape is an infectously strange, bleepy, and dreamy debut release.Sanae Yamasaki (Moskitoo) hails from Sappporo, Japan in the country’s northern-most prefecture of Hokkaido. Perhaps a reaction to the cool climate of her home, her multi-instrumen…
Helbzeit
We enter an open landscape, rich in impressions, and then leave the beaten track. Here and there we notice something that merits closer inspection. After a shorter or longer pause, we venture a little in another direction. We might simply take the day as it comes and without concern let everything that has been and that we have experienced go to the winds. Or perhaps perceive the singular aspects shown by this landscape with an acute awareness. Use them to recall past events and experiences, thu…
Seamstress In A Suitcase
Tan or Boil – a pun on the name of bratty short stop from those 1970s Bad News Bears films that stuck – is the alias of the Pittsburgh-born Jason Bacasa. After growing up in Pittsburgh and studying graphic design, Jason took flight from his home town to work freelance in a variety of cities, though his latest and current stint in New York seems more permanent than those in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Chicago. On the songwriting side, Jason’s continual travels kept him to just an acoustic guit…
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…
to r.s.
Awesome solo release by a former Amuleto band member (on the die schachtel Musica Improvvisa box)...Wanke continues to amaze us with his sensitive, detailed and spacious sound works. "to r.s." follows up his lauded debut "Caves" on Sedimental with another stunner. For “to r.s.”, Wanke uses electric and acoustic guitars, acoustic piano, objects and natural sounds. The 53 minutes of this unique piece divided in four parts combine static compositions, drones and looped music. Structurally viewed a…
Re:PRES
Revisiting the treasures of Polish Radio studios (Polish Radio Experimental Studio, NEAR), the label offered Bolt miniaturized components of the composer Eugeniusz Rudnik (1933) to Lenar DJ (Marcin Lenarczyk) which reworks the way lo -fi in his studio (both guitar and bass amps, turntable, sampler loopers). Astonishing when one feels ownership playback via speaker which adds a paste, color these miniature electroacoustic "Nobody knows how many miniatures have been conceived by Rudnik. But one th…
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…
Freaked With Jet
No guitars and fuck two-second gaps. A collection of six 7"s (Gutter Splint, Fortune b/w The Eyes Of Men, Epistasis, Vacuum, Vanishing Point, and the split with Agathocles). Performed by CHARLIE MUMMA, CORYDON RONNAU, JOHN WIESE. The only band to make a Milton and a Mentors reference on the same album. Typically I think noisecore is best in small blasts, but for those who can't find or play the records, this collection is still pretty terse, don't worry.
Silent City
Features Will Oldham (Bonnie Prince Billy) on vocals, and is a fascinating, compelling collaboration that mixes the last three centuries into one beautifully haunting, cryptic flow of idea-sound. Presented in a quietly handsome paper folio package!
Sonatas
Markus Hinterhäuser shows us a terrific interpretation of the piano sonatas from the russian composer. Massive music!They say that Galina Ustvolskaya led a very secluded life, that she was a loner. It is amazing, though, how distinct an image of her emerges from the almost meditative way in which she immersed herself in structures, dynamics and combinations of pitches. And not only that. You can hear the concentration on her work and the contrasts within the scope of an existence, some even say…
Vital
In March 2006, Idea Fire Company made their first appearances in Europe. Core members Karla Borecky and Scott Foust linked up with Frans de Waard and hit selected hot spots in The Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany. Adding de Waard (Beequeen, Shifts, Kapotte Muziek, Freiband, etc) was a brave gamble that paid off handsomely. Armed with only a tiny digital keyboard (Borecky), a radio/cassette boombox and small echo unit (Foust), and a sawed off MS 20 (de Waard), the trio captivated audiences large…
Pharmelodies
A colossal and epic post-ambient symphony in three movements, where echoes of string instruments, deep drones of indecipherable origin, layered synthetic waves, slowed-down and distorted dark sonic masses challenge time with a para-immobility in constant turmoil, in an unpredictable, progressive and sometimes cyclic combination of statuesque sonic forms whose physiognomy is often known and familiar, while at the same time elusive, disturbing, arcane and mysterious... Another highest and …
Wedding ceremony
In May 2007 the sextet of Lucio Capece, Julia Eckhardt, Christian Kesten, Radu Malfatti, Toshimaru Nakamura and Taku Sugimoto convened in Belgium to work together and play two concerts, one in Gent and one in Brussels. During their time together the group played a mixture of improvisation and their own compositions. A number of exciting tensions were present. The contrast between loud and quiet, activity and inactivity and indeed improvisation and composition. Wedding Ceremony ties together many…
Electric Fruit
"Electric Fruit" alludes to the vexing encounter between nature and technology, one of the most complex issues that we face as a global society. The album brings together a powerhouse of innovators—Weasel Walter, Mary Halvorson and Peter Evans—to emphatically capture, question and explore the throes of this crucial contradiction. "Electric Fruit" is a stirring and potent recording of the dangerous confrontation between the innate and the artificial, the organic and the robotic. Each member of th…
Musiques Machinales
1 copy only, long out of print - for many years, Pierre BASTIEN has developed his personal music based on musical machines made with Mecano. His orchestra MECANIUM is his backing band both on album and on stage. All this creates a tender, delicate and emotive machine music that seduced Pascal DOMELADE from the beginning. A terrific mixture of J. Dubuffet and John Cage
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…
Spoils
For this latest album Caledonian folk impresario Alasdair Roberts teams up with expected collaborators like Alex Neilson (whose drumming and percussion work has illuminated many a free-folk record over recent years, a few of which Roberts has been involved with) and more unusual contributors such as Niko-Matti Ahti of Fonal's Kiila. Perhaps more than ever, Roberts' music invites comparisons to Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, traveling sufficiently far from the trad songwriting fold to be thought of as 'a…
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…
Play robot dream
Trumpet virtuoso Marco Blaauw, known for his pioneering performances of contemporary classical music has been working with composer and sound improviser Yannis Kyriakides in numerous projects including a multi-media perfomance 'co-inc', and several projects for the ensemble musikFabrik in Cologne. 'Play Robot Dream' is a set of improvisations for trumpet(s) and computer. At times playful, at times meditative, they fuse a haunting melodic tendency with a provocative mix of drum machines an…