New Arrivals
Black wooden
6 songs, 21 minutes. In high summer of 2007, Phil Elverum, in the guise of Mount Eerie, found his way to Southern Studios. Armed with a borrowed guitar and some notebook paper, and with little time before an evening gig, Mount Eerie and Southern's engineer Harvey Birrell recorded the six songs of Black Wooden.Black Wooden is the coming together of ideas that had travelled with Mount Eerie for months and had solidified into compositions in the days and hours before the studio session. The title i…
Lalibela
Founded 40 years ago in 1972 The Pyramids released three albums before splitting up in 1977: Lalibela (1973), King Of Kings (1974) followed by the seminal Birth/Speed/Merging LP (1976). Three albums that made them one of the most mysterious and legendary of all the spiritual cosmic jazz collectives of the early 70s, like the Art Ensemble of Chicago and Sun Ra. Lalibela (1973) was the first album recorded by The Pyramids following their landmark journey throughout Africa as students from Antioch …
My Love Is Higher Than Your Assessment
...of What My Love Could Be" EXCLUSIVE!! 2LP vinyl. This is ground zero for one of the 90s last true cult bands; now legendary for churning ghostly wailings, unearthly bellows, & gentle whispers together into one soaring, crawling, ugly & beautiful blend of brilliance. An essential listening for all fans of hard & heavy post-rock. Comes w/ 12x12 insert. Don't sleep on this!
Songs
Zeitkratzer releasing "songs"? Isn't Zeitkratzer a contemporary music group? Or a noise band? Songs? These songs actually have been developed over several years and evolved from a fashion show zeitkratzer was making the music for. Marc Weiser a.k.a. rechenzentrum, since then a member of zeitkratzer, sings. Marc has already caused some furore as Mark Markowitch, singing fake songs in fake languages in some hidden Berlin bars. So now all of those together: zeitkratzer's noise, zeitkratzer's…
s/t
"Marissa Nadler's Kickstarter funded self-titled self-release. Brian McTear produced the album, which Nadler says is the 'most honest, natural record' of her career." "You'll want this music to never end...best severe and complex emotions that we've possibly never recognized in this or previous lives." -- LA Weekly
Tender Exploration
“Tender Exploration” reminds me of Hayao Miyazaki’s “Howl’s Moving Castle”, it’s an enormous metallic machine on spindly legs, walking like a toddler, but also steaming, mumbling, panting, a creature full of energy, and inhabited by a fire demon. “Drake”, the first track”, starts seeking for a structure almost clumsily, the band members seem to have to find each other. But soon they have a good chemistry and Bauer, who dominates this piece in spite of its name, adds his huge repertoire of tech…
I am the Center: private issue new age music in America, 1950-90
One of the best things about Seattle label Light in the Attic’s new new age compilation I Am the Center is that it doesn’t try and pretend that new age music was something that it’s not. Look at the album’s cover illustration and you’ll see an angel-like creature carrying an orb of yellow light through the clouds; open the gatefold and you’ll see what appears to be a bird made of stars launching itself out of the ocean. Press play and be delivered into over two hours of mind-numbingly mellow mus…
NYC, Hell 3:00 AM
James Ferraro takes inspiration from "the things I see" in his 'NYC, Hell 3:AM' dystopia. The follow-up to 'Sushi' is a wry reflection of his locale, "a surreal psychological sculpture of American decay and confusion" evoking imagery of "rats, metal landscape, toxic water, junkie friends, HIV billboards, evil news, luxury and unbound wealth, exclusivity, facelifts, romance, insane police presence and lonely people... all against the sinister vastness of Manhattan's alienating skyline." Of course…
Bridges
Duane Pitre's new album, Bridges, features two pieces taken from a suite of analogous compositions by the same name, and was composed by Pitre in 2012. The two pieces that comprise the album are meant to work together in sequence as a composite work; or they can be isolated and listened to on their own. The title derives its name from the original concept for this work, which was to bring together aspects of traditional Eastern music (such as compositional form and tuning) with Western musical t…
A Bureaucratic Desire for Extra-Capsular Extraction
A Bureaucratic Desire for Extra-Capsular Extraction gathers all of the music drone metal progenitors Earth recorded in October 1990, during their earliest sessions at Portland's Smegma Studios. Earth, featuring soon-to-be Melvin Joe Preston in its second lineup, intended for those seven tracks to serve as its debut. Record label decisions interfered. Three of those tracks were released a year later via Sub Pop, on the out-of-print EP Extra-Capsular Extraction; four more were released…
Christmas Soli
Remastered edition: John Fahey has made a habit of recording a new album of Christmas music every five or six years, but The New Possibility, which was originally released in 1968, is still his best. One of the best and most influential acoustic guitarists of his generation, John Fahey's music fused past and present, borrowing from the traditions of blues and folk music and filtering them through a modern musical viewpoint. Some of Fahey's most striking (and most popular) work appeared on a seri…
Mercury time
Komora A - The trio founded by Jakub Miko ajczyk, Karol Koszniec and Dominik Kowalczyk exists from the fall of 2004. Stylistically Komora A locates itself close to ambient but not that one of smooth muzak and background music origins but that full of pulsating anxiety, reaching the black heart of the genre. Profound drones, delicate percussive intrusions, stately whizzes of analogue and modular synths, industrial interventions, multilayered structures - these are only a few ofÊ elements used by …
Sounding the Body Electric
The connections between the visual arts and experimental music were closer in the 1960s and 1970s than perhaps any time before or since. Sound and image combined in artists films, \'happenings\' and sounding installations. Experimental Forms of notation were also created to stimulate uninhibited musical expression. Eastern European artists and composers were at the forefront of these new experiments with sound and yet their achievements have never been recorded until now. Sounding the Body…
From the Irresponsible Country Sounds
Minimal sound manipulations by the Japanese master, in his usual and unique way.
The Four Seasons
"Noah Creshevsky composes some of the most meticulously constructed electronic music around. For his third Tzadik CD he has created a sonic history of his life work, inspired by the idea of a retrospective. The Four Seasons presents a new large-scale composition that reflects his work from 1992 on to his present work with Hyperrealism, creating virtual "super-performers" using the sounds of voices and traditional instruments pushed beyond human capacities. Another brilliant and varied program ch…
Old Punks
Doronco is a bass player who is most well known for his stints in Les Rallizes Dénudés, Suishou no Fune and with Keiji Haino. Here he is joined by members of Maher Shalal Hash Baz, a Frenchman and an additional female vocalist who have made an album of sophisticated 70s style downer pop. The band uses vocals, bassoon and trumpet over a see-sawing battle of piano / guitar shrill balanced against warm rhythms that sound suspiciously close to how you want them to. Translated as "Mud Cloud," t…
Les archives de l'univers amnesique illustre
Coloured white vinyl in a run of 250 copies with inserts by each artist. A new pairing of minds and techniques on a steel-grey voyage across the treacherous Ifingr river. Kiyoharu Kuwayama, master of resonant spaces and junk objects holds the reins over three chapters of spiralling horror and madness. Sounds are coaxed out ashamed and blushing: the syphilitic cough, the cracked shin bone and the greasy sheen of night sweats wired up to a 9 volt battery. Wataru Kasahara plays the mysterious maske…
Patagonian Field Recordings
Carlos Casas is a filmmaker and visual artist from Barcelona. His work is a cross between documentary film, cinema, and contemporary visual and sound arts. In 2001 he started a trilogy of works dedicated to the most extreme environments on the planet, Patagonia, Aral sea, and Siberia, with a particular interest on how humans relate with the territory they occupy. These tracks comes fro…
The darkened mirror
Tetuzi Akiyama, guitars. Tom Carter, guitars. Christian Kiefer, guitars, banjo and Chip Conrad, percussion, Scott Leftridge, bass & bowed bass. 'The darkened mirror' is a unique vision of American music. Tetuzi Akiyama is a highly unique and experimental guitarist heavily applying free improvisation and noise. Besides guitar, he also plays electronics, viola, and self-made instruments. Best known for his work with acclaimed iconoclasts Charalambides, which he co-founded with Christina Ca…
Six & Six
Originally released in 1981, JANDEK'S second album stands as an incredible document of the formative stages of his cracked genius. The musical elements are almost catatonic: 9 songs drift by as a series of slight variations on several desolate, untuned acoustic guitar phrases. First time on vinyl in over 25 years. Old-style tip on jacket. LIMITED!