New Arrivals
Monsters & Miasmas
Brian Cook (TERMINALS) & wife Maryrose make up this long-running project who's releases on Ajax/3 Beads of Sweat & Siltbreeze have continued to tread a line between haunting country-esque ballads & the brand of noise-rock for which the Terminals is known.
Dark as the sea
'Architeuthis rex. Leviathan. King. Magnificent sea dweller and haunter of the dreams of Italian artist Antonio Gallucci. Dark of the Sea is that dream, each of the seven recordings an aperture into a horrific underwater world filled with the fear of what lies outside. Together, the album is a kaleidoscope of Don Cherry's Brown Rice, backward masked King Tubby acetates, strange strings, outer space broadcasts of unholy funeral rites, Native American percussion and metaphysical drone. Illustrati…
Mysterienszenen
Elmar Lampson’s music has got what is commonly referred to as “soul.” It becomes apparent in the way the music embraces the listeners and accompanies them through time in images of sound. The Mysterienszenen were inspired by the Mystery Dramas of Rudolf Steiner, with whose ideas Lampson (whose grandparents had personally witnessed Steiner’s performances) became acquainted already as a young man.Both works relate to the old tradition of confronting scientific knowledge with mystical knowledge. Ye…
Castings
The title of Fern Knight’s 2006 release, Music for Witches and Alchemists, served simultaneously as a wonderfully apt description and an unambiguous product warning. If you prefer the mundane to the magical, move on: These are not the druids you’re looking for. Since then, the group has relocated to Arlington from Philadelphia, and while Fern Knight’s music evokes far-away times and places, it turns out the band fits in nicely with the D.C. area’s musical history—assuming you can stomach …
Implosione tra le pieghe dell\'anima
A sensational CD release of an awesome tape (originally published by Multiple Configuration) that includes live tracks recorded between 1983/1984 and comes in a completely remastered edition. Tasaday are a "cult" band active since the early Eighties. Born from the merging of Die Form and Nulla Iperreale, they are probably the most eclectic and groundbreaking representative of an Italian experimental scene that used to blend elements of rock, noise, experimental and industrial music with great co…
Gallipoli 1915 e le altre storie
Another double OLBM CD that testifies the remarkable work carried out within the New Wave phenomenon by Viridanse (from Alessandria, Piedmont) between 1983 and 1987. Despite its short existence, the group has left an important trace in a time when the world of music was already full of proposals. Influenced by the English Wave and the Florentine scene, Viridanse debut with a split-tape shared with The Art of Waiting. In 1984, Contempo Records produces their 12” EP "Benvenuto Cellini" and - the f…
13 & 14 for Guitars
Composed by Taku Sugimoto. Tetuzi Akiyama: guitar. Recorded live at Loop-Line on October 23, 2009. Recorded by Taku Sugimoto. Mastered by Taku Unami. Drawing by Taku Sugimoto.
Rekviem MB-JMI
A "classic" minimal ambient album; just one long track, a bit obscure, of a static nature but unarrestable as a matter of fact and slowly developing, built with layers of soft and “round” sounds, heavily processed and effected, whose origin seems to be an organ... "Atypical" for sure, if confrontated with the huge and widely diversified productions of Maurizio Bianchi, this new album is probably one of the last and not to be missed releases signed by “M.B.”, since he has already announced his de…
Collected Dust
Marcus Fischer is a musician and multimedia artist currently based in Portland, Oregon. Field recordings, chance, and DIY instruments, coupled with acoustic instrumentation and visual art, define what has become his minimal signature. His uncanny ability to sculpt delicate beauty from the simplest of sound elements results in compositions that are both intimate and expansive.From January 2009 through January 2010, Marcus kept a blog called Dust Breeding to document the results of his goal to com…
Retro vulva 2003
A Chilean band living in Paris, who do a really fuckeded up punk rock influenced equally by Captain Beefheart, Os Mutantes, and Caroliner. Limited to 300 copies.
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…
Morning And Sunrise
At some point all great explorers, from Amundsen to Kishan Singh Rawat, come to an opening up and cast their minds across a big space. A clearing, a promontory, a look out from a place no one's been before. Jakob Olausson ventured deep on Moonlight Farm, his debut for De Stijl in the winter of 2005. His singular expression returns on Morning and Sunrise, an explorer's codex, a gaze through to what's more important and less seen. The path yet traveled and the sun arcing over it. Morning and Sunri…
Live
Oxtirn 'live' documents a performance in new york city, by the new trio of geoff mullen, ashley paul and eli keszler. following a score by keszler, the group performs on an array of instruments, using three guitars, drums, voice, auto-motorized harps, tenor harp, bass harp, microphones, clarinet, alto saxophone, crotales, drums and cymbals. the music drifts in a unique way between a wide variety of sounds, from incredible density of clattering metal textures and string attacks, wall of so…
Leyfou Ljosinu
Icelandic cellist Hildur Gudnadóttir presents a new album, Leyfdu Ljósinu (trans. "Allow The Light"), recorded live at the Music Research Centre, University of York, in January 2012, by Tony Myatt, using a SoundField ST450 Ambisonic microphone and two Neumann U87 microphones (NB -- it was not played in a concert environment and there was no audience). To be faithful to time and space -- elements vital to the movement of sound -- this album was recorded entirely live, with no post-tampering …
Vessel
'when I was young, at night, if the wind was blowing in the direction of our house I could hear the slow beating of the ships' engines.' Vessel was conceived for and presented as a site-specific, multi-channel sound installation in Diapason Gallery, Brooklyn, in October 2008. The composition consists of recordings of cargo ships on the river Waal in the vicinity of Zaltbommel, a small town in the heart of The Netherlands. For my parents. Thanks to Jan Tiggelman (boatsman) and Michael J. …
Blueprints
Over the past 10 years 12k has established itself as a label on the forefront of minimalist music and has become home to some of the most important artists of the genre. It is label that time and time again has not been afraid to release debut albums from new artists, drawing on the new energy they interject into both the scene and the label.With the release of Blueprints, 12k presents 2 tracks each from 6 artists new to its roster and showcases some of the new sounds and influences that will ca…
Tenkujin
Fifth and final release by Far East Family Band (if you include the 1973s Nihonjin released under the Far Out banner), Tenkujin was the first of the bands albums to be released in the US on the small and short-lived Calfornian-based All Ears label. Without Kitaro, who by this time had departed to persue a solo career, the band reverted to its earlier balled-based sound, this time supported on drums by former Samurai alumnist Yujin Harada. The expected Pink Floyd influences appear in abundance, a…
Ural Umbo
Ural Umbo is Reto Mder (Sum of R, RM74) and Steven Hess (Fessenden, Haptic) electrifying internal music through a broad spectrum of instrumentation. Horns, piano, organ, harmonium, bass guitar, strings, electronics, drums and percussion guide the formation of black, subliminal melodies and slow feedback accompaniments. Each piece consumes the organic and dynamically balanced process that created it. With a nod to 1960s horror movie scoring Mder and Hess displace sound from the veil of the supern…
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…
Spiritual/Mental/Physical
‘Spiritual-Mental-Physical’ is a collection of wild early Death demos, presenting the three young Hackney brothers consolidating their powers as they embark on a trip into pure rock and roll music. The album comes with liner notes from Bobby Hackney Sr. explaining the genesis and meaning of the songs included.