New Arrivals
Rain in skull
Australian Charles Curse's music is one of the weirdest things I've come across all year. On Rain In Skull, fragments of disjointed folk melodies move across a plain of wheezing chords, tape hiss, children's voices, ambient washes, amp hum, electronic glitch and bits of buzz in general. The contrast between downcast guitar playing and the physical claustrophobia-inducing weight of sound is equally perplexing and intriguing. It's all presented in a decidedly lo-fi environment but the sound constr…
Lonely microphone
RESTOCKED!! An unreleased 30-minute piece by composer and sound artist Joe Colley. Composed from concrete materials and premiered at Field Effects, San Francisco, in 2002. Rehersal version discovered and slightly re-edited in late 2011. Joe Colley (b.1972 Ft. Lauderdale) is a self taught artist concerned primarily with the phenomena of sound and it’s unique ability to activate a consciousness set apart from rational understanding in a way very different from visual or verbal means. This co…
Marking Time
Originally released on CD in 2008 on the Preservation label, & now available on vinyl for the 1st time. Using a selection of bowed string instruments & lavishing these sustained howls w/ the most delicate of fingerpicked guitar & gentle piano, he takes us through a most harrowing journey. These short songs are deft & deeply touching musings on loss & on the importance of time. Comparisons could be made to plenty of Richard's modern-classical or avant-folk contemporaries, but few imbue their musi…
Live In San Francisco
Astromero is the psychedelic synth-noise project of Japanese pioneer Hiroshi Hasegawa (Astro,CCCC), and LA's Damion Romero (Speculum Fight). Side A is a Live show in San Francisco, a total scorcher with an immense level of energy where shifting walls of synthetic sound produced by Hasegawa are complemented by the signature rumbling low end frequencies coming from Damion's custom electronics. Side B is a new studio track, full of brain melting tones and showing the more compositional side of this…
Basement Recordings 1978-1982
A while ago one of the members of the youngest antwerp based free jazz band SHELDON SIEGEL (all 16 year olds..) visited me, I had just met them and he wanted to come by to get some records. We spoke about free jazz for a while, then he said the magical words "My dad use to play free jazz in the 70's as well".. I was like "ow, and if that was in antwerp, was it with WIM?", he said "Yes yes, he's on one of their tapes with Fred Van Hove, Ivo Van Der Borght etc". My heartbeat went a little faster, …
Human Taste
Portland, OR-by-way-of-Michigan garage gang Little Claw first tripped our radar with their self-released Why Not 7 inch, which was/is raw and physical and swingin’ in all the ways you want a 7” to be. Their LA live shows proved even more ripping and charged; we were sold. So we sprung at the offer to enshrine their latest (and best) album, Human Taste, on vinyl for the world’s turntables to adore. Packed with classic, cracked anthems (“Frozen In The Future,” “Colors You Drown”), basement weirdo …
Live In Tokyo, August, 19th 1974, Part One
This double album (divided into two LPs), recorded live at the Nippon Columbia Studio in Tokyo in 1974, was the group's final effort before disbanding. Here Kosugi and the Travellers blend Eastern and Western instrumentation, vocal chants and electronics to create free-form psych-laden drones. This historic album is an essential and influential piece of Japanese avant rock." Part One LP, clear vinyl in clear plastic sleeve with black lettering. Limited edition …
Ambianxe
an edition of 250 copies on 180 gram virgin black vinyl. A live LP of incendiary concréte guitar shards. Two live sets from SuperDeluxe Tokyo. Imagine Derek Bailey slamming his guitar into the circuitry of David Tudor and the subsequent brawl. Polite applause please. This is the sound of Caravaggio. Marco works outwards from his home in Melbourne, Australia. Primarily a visual artist he produces artwork through the employment of an open methodology, avoiding practice riddiled with formal …
Gangnam Basement
Songs and field recordings from up and down the Korean peninsula and under the ground during 2006-2007: native winds and bells, charismatic tongues, mountain shamans, fauna, charms, university innards, resurrected ancestors, missteps, ceremony, morning, winter, night, glass rooms beneath Gangnam, totem + taboo; concluded with nitrous-damaged pop songs, Bowie cover and cellphone karaoke. Handmade art,
Day before one
Frode Gjerstad (alto sax, bass clarinet) and Paal Nilssen-Love (drums) recorded 2000 by Frode. Cover art by Terry Nilssen-Love. 'Two men sitting on a balcony, old friends, right before dawn. Maybe sipping some nice cups of tea, maybe even something stronger. Talking about anything, things shared, opinions, the way of the world. From time to time the conversation heats up a bit, touches things that are not seen completely eye to eye, then (eventually, always) understanding, friendship, trust take…
Didascalies 2
Vinyl-only release. Performers: Jean-Philippe Collard-Neven (piano); Claude Berset (piano); Vincent Royer (viola). Sub Rosa presents the first release after their Luc Ferrari trilogy. Didascalies 2 is not to be confused with 2007's Didascalies (SR 261CD) -- this is another composition entirely, never published before. "The other day I found a file from 1993, a score for two pianos entitled 'Revenir à la Note de Départ' (trans. 'Getting Back To The Initial Note'). So I decided to turn it i…
Emergency Stairway
Emergency Stairway could have been Thought Broadcast's debut vinyl full-length. In fact, when commissioned in early 2012, only one 7" and two super-limited tapes were in existence, until some other label snapped to the finish with an even older commission. So, let's say an "almost-debut." Confused? Well, yes, that's probably the point. Ravi Binning's Thought Broadcast project oozes out a dank and confused audio experience isolated way beyond the city limits. A glance at the titles suggests…
Live at the Squat Theatre
LP, heavy fluorescent orange vinyl; ltd and numbered 1/99 only, rec. August 24, 1979; first landing of the Arkestra at Squat ! on back cover there's even an elusive photo of original Squat entrance/building. Arkestra personnel during that period:John Gilmore, Marshall Allen, Elo Omoe, Danny Thompson, Michael Ray, June Tyson, Pat Patrick, Hayes Burnett, and James Jackson, Jr."So many fond, fun memories of those magical, wonderfully endless Nights Of Ra at Squat - the time there was a massive b…
Badlands
If you think something’s wrong with your speakers, you are mistaken. No, you can’t turn up the bass. You’re just listening to the raw, stripped down wail of Alex Zhang Hungtai, better known as Dirty Beaches. His MySpace describes the music as “minimalist rockabilly,” and those are probably the two best words I could think of to describe his newest LP, Badlands.At times, Hungtai’s vocals sound quite Elvis-esque; at other times, you can barely make out the mumbling echoes over the subdued drum bea…
Group: Xex
Xex were an all-synthesizer band from South River, New Jersey who recorded their debut album group:xex in 1980. Formed when a trio of high school misfits with funny names (Waw Pierogi, Thumbalina Gugielmo and Alex Zander) teamed up with some friends from Rutgers CollegePerformed entirely on then-state-of-the-art Arps, synths and electronic drums – no guitars anywhere – group: xex aims for the future, but comes across now like a time capsule from the deepest, darkest Reagan years. Each song burro…
HYDratioN
Super limited edition of 300 hand-numbered copies. Hand screened jackets printed by Neil Burke at Monoroid. For years, both Z'EV and Jon Mueller have explored these possibilities, both within traditional forms, and singling out specific elements within those forms. For Z'EV, an entire book, called Rhythmmajik, was written about the properties of rhythm, while his history pairs him with a wealth of collaborators, from Carl Stone, Glenn Branca, and many others, as he pursued the quest for rhythmic…
The Immeasurable Gift
The Immeasurable Gift is a testament to cathartic possibilities and the role of creation/release as a means of understanding. Recorded throughout the past three years in a variety of locations and personal moments; encapsulated by a common, unrelenting concern. Beautifully delicate, elegiac melodies concealed within curtains of dense electronic ambiance reveal themselves like the light at the end of the tunnel; a signifier of the temporary vessel form. Balancing recklessness with care and…
Ja / Nein - Sonate
LP in white vinyl, comes in aluminium-cork coversleeve, designed from children with mental handicaps with 4 inserts. It's limited to 150 copies.
Sufferers
Ohio-based noise upsetter Mike Shiflet has amassed an enviable amount of releases in the last decade. Tapes, vinyl, cdrs – you name it, he’s done it, but it’s taken until now for Shiflet to weld together what he regards as his defining work. The first in a series of two ‘proper’ albums, ‘Sufferers’ takes the listener to the very heart of Shiflet’s sound – through the abrasive noise heard on his early releases all the way to the shimmering ambience that made up his breakthrough album ‘Lla…
Brand
“Brand” is the new trio of Gary Smith (guitar), Silvia Kastel (voice and synth), Ninni Morgia (guitar). On this recording Gary Smith produces the playing for which he’s considered a master of avant guitar: multiple layering, complex grainy textures, dense counterpoint, influences of birdsong. Fused with the guitar of Ninni Morgia, which floats between minimal movements of primordial electronics, pre-war slide blues and Hendrix-esque feedback. Over, and blending with them, Silvia Kastel’s mo…