New Arrivals
Uncommon Sense
This is: brass to the power of three, and a lot more besides. John Clark, Dave Taylor and Franz Hackl on French horn, trumpet and bass trombone are not just a brass trio but create a whole cosmos of sounds, styles and techniques. In their musical actions and reactions, each of the three is always also each of the other two, with the voices merging into complex moods and styles. On this album the trio reveal their sense of humor, and a moment later become absorbed in hymnic devotion. Big-band ges…
Daydreaming
Debut album by Seattle's Rafael Anton Irisarri, released in 2007 on Deaf Center's Miasmah label. A splendid but pitch black album based on long piano melodies, distant drones and even more distant glitches, "Daydreaming" is a particularely sad and introvert CD, which takes the most emotional and melancholic side of the other Miasmah releases, but expresses them in a very direct and stripped down way. Splendid.
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…
Lithp
Improvised music group originating from Haifa, Israel. Ofer Bymel (drums), Adi Snir (soprano & tenor saxophone saxophone, clarinet), Michel Mayer (guitar), Ronni Benner (guitar). A clean, sophisticated minimalist style and a sound that fits snuggly into the soft abstract current European scene.
Folksongs & Ballads
'The only album by Tia Blake was recorded at the Ossian Studio in Paris in 1971 and released that same year by the tiny French label SFP (Societe Francaise de Productions Phonographiques). Great psych-folk with guitars, dobro, flute and fantastically fragile female vocals. First time available on CD, with Tia Blake's own recollections."
at Oto
The first meeting of two masters of improvised music. Concentrated solo pieces from each before an uncompromising duo.When Matthew Shipp was invited to London's Cafe Oto for a residency in 2010 he immediately asked to play with John Butcher, perhaps not the most obvious choice of collaborator but one that proved inspired. Although they generally work in very different areas of improvised music, both players share an intensity of focus and pugnacious individualism that heightened rather than hind…
Just before music
Fans of Sun Ra, take notice -- there is a new American original on the scene who hails from Birmingham, Alabama. Lonnie Holley's music is unlike anything ever heard, and these recordings are a welcome addition to the continuum of music. This album marks the first time Dust-to-Digital has taken an artist into a recording studio. Lonnie Bradley Holley was born on February 10, 1950 in Birmingham, Alabama, the seventh of twenty-seven children. From the age of 5, Holley worked various jobs: pi…
Piano & Percussion Works
2011 release. Satoko Inoue is an experienced performer of Ferrari’s works and had a lively exchange of ideas with the composer, who was also present at the recording sessions. No wonder then that precisely those ideas of open work and its “anecdotal” interpretation were the ones that were most important to him – as such sounds were to him always abstract at the core, even if he first illustrated them in a very visual and associative way. Satoko Inoue writes: “We discussed, he explained ab…
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…
House
CD edition, 'House' is the 2nd official full-length offering by Cleveland, Ohio duo MIST featuring Sam Goldberg (of Radio People) and John Elliott (Emeralds, Outer Space, Imaginary Softwoods etc) after 2009's self-titled debut effort on Amethyst Sunset. A suite consisting of 7 complex, layered compositions shows new progression in composition and melody from the duo. From the lightning fast, bittersweet crescendo of 'Twin Lanes' to the dramatic chord progressions of 'I Can Still Hear Your Voice'…
Spiritual Jazz 3: Europe
Esoteric, modal and deep jazz from the European underground, 1963-1972. At the end of the '50s, Miles Davis' Kind of Blue heralded the revelatory arrival of modal jazz. As the vibrations of these giant steps resonated across the world, European jazz musicians reassessed their bearings and began to steer a new course. Across the continent, they sent roots down into the rich soil of the European folk and Christian liturgical traditions, extended their music along ancient routes of communicat…
Golden Worry
"‘Golden Worry’ features new drummer Emmanuel Nicolaidis and is huge step forward from 2008’s ‘Terrible Two’. The band has kept busy touring with Beach House, Celebration, Dan Deacon, Zomes, Battles, Mi Ami, Jason Urick, and Future Islands. The CD version comes in a four panel mini-LP style gatefold package. "
Berlinerstrasse 20 (2009)
Improvisation by Lucio Capece and Radu MALFATTI recorded 5 july 2009 at 'kulturbunker mühlheim', 'to torsten and till'.
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…
Neue Volksmusik
he zeitkratzer project Neue Volksmusik (new folk music) is more of a reflex to, rather than a reflection on folk music. This is because the ensemble does not play specific music with any sense of distance. On the contrary, zeitkratzer is taking possession of folk music in its essence. This means that they continue a tradition which folk musics all have in common: constant transformation. No form of authentic folk music can ever be about conservation as a fixed medium, destined for a museu…
Sights
Back in stock. Take two collaborators, one a German sound artist noted for his painstaking micro-engineered computer compositions, the other a New Zealand noise terrorist with a reputation for making albums over his morning tea breaks. Put them in a basement studio in Karlsruhe for three days in February 2003, feed them on coffee and apple juice and let them out to walk in the woods once a day. What do you get? Sights, a dramatic collision of two very different but complementary approaches to th…
Dispositions Furtives
Through the open sound portals created by his compatriot Castiglioni, the Italian pianist Alfonso Alberti first entered col legno's World of New Music; on his second album, he dedicates his sensitive and brilliant musicality to Gérard Pesson's fragile and puzzling fabrics of sound. A selection of piano pieces has been compiled in a joint effort by the pianist and the French composer; in his interpretations Alberti lets us catch glimpses of musical structures as though they were glittering just u…
Wege
Wege translates as 'path' and it's a fitting title for the latest rendering from master percussionist and experimental composer Andrea Belfi. The albums' four pieces act as orientation points through some imaginary sonic landscape. Wege is Belfi's forth LP (the first with Room40), and stems entirely from compositions completed at two artist-in-residence projects in Austria (Hotel Pupik) and in Brussels (Q-O2 Werkplatz). The album is built around a cyclic electro-acoustic system, through which Be…
Nazoranai
Keiji Haino (guitar, vocals & synth), Stephen O'Malley (bass guitar) & Oren Ambarchi (battery). Recorded by Chris Fullard at Gaîté Lyrique, Paris 8th November 2011. Edited by Oren Ambarchi in Sydney January 2012. Mixed by Joe Talia & Oren Ambarchi at Chinatown, Melbourne 8th February 2012. Mastered by Joe Talia at Chinatown, Melbourne 17th April 2012. Vinyl cut by Rashad Becker at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin April 2012. Artwork: Lars Teichmann 'Bathing Girls' & 'Nymphos' (detail, 2010, …
Sax Pax for a Sax
Classical world-folk style by Moondog joined with jazz timbers by The London Saxophonic: the amazing and original collaboration between two distinct way of music.