New Arrivals
Mimikry
Having nicely set up the release of this album with their Ret Marut Handshake EP a few months back, Alva Noto and Blixa Bargeld (of Einsturzende Neubauten fame) deliver a set that exceeds all expectations. One of the most strikingly obvious comparisons to arise from that first batch of material was the Alan Vega/Pan Sonic collaboration, yet Mimikry goes much further than combining the established aesthetics of its constituent parts and creates something that actually feels very new. Car…
When Stars Glide Through Solid
Long awaited reissue of the debut release from Mehdi Amezianes Twinsistermoon project, originally released as a gorgeous handmade self released CDR in 2007, to many of Natural Snow Buildings and each of their solo project, this is the pick of all their releases, which is rather ironic being that its one of the smallest release runs in the discography of all the Natural Snow Buildings and related projects, it is infact the most limited release of all the Twinsistermoon releases. But due to the ma…
Bag It
double Vinyl edition with additional tracks: The Thing with Mats Gustafsson, Ingebrigt Haaker-Flaten and Paal Nilssen-Love covering 54 Nude Honeys, The Ex, Duke Ellington and Albert Ayler, intense modern improv. Swedish reed-chewer Mats Gustafsson is probably bored to tears by now by the Brötzmann comparisons that so regularly greet his work with the Thing. Even so, the elder German icon remains a central pillar of reference, most noticeably through a gnarled horn language that balances mach…
Black Mill Tapes Volumes 1 & 2
Not much is known about the shadowy figure of the Head Technician, the man supposedly behind Pye Corner Audio. There are rumors that in another life he was an engineer to the stars, and while that can't be verified, there's certainly an air of expertise in this bumper set of productions. Black Mill Tapes Volumes 1 & 2 were originally released by the Technician himself, and have been picked up for a very special vinyl release. These collect the first handfuls of tracks from the Pye Corner A…
Life...The Best Game In Town
After releasing several albums in the 90s, Harvey Milk are celebrating their own renaissance by lauding the virtues of "Life...The Best Game In Town". Spearheaded by the alternately burly and angelic vocal stylings of Milk mastermind Creston Spiers, "Life" is both tumultuous and grueling, resonating with the glorious slow-motion radiance of Total Dirge Power. They've since been joined by Thrones legend Joe Preston.
Repo
The frazzled and fractured electronic rhythms of Brooklyn noisemakers Black Dice are bent into shape once again on this fifth studio album from the band. The album, titled Repo, is comprised of home recordings and sessions from New York’s Rare Book Room studios. It’s another fine example of Black Dice’s singular aesthetic, which has been carefully honed through years of equipment abuse in low rent venues, art galleries and other improvised performance spaces. The record comes with a 20-page book…
Second Original Silence
Thurston Moore, Jim O'Rourke and Mats Gustafsson last convened for the monumentally noisy Diskaholics Anonymous LP, Weapons of Ass Destruction. Now the trio have returned to Smalltown Superjazz for yet more sonic carnage, this time joined by ace drummer Paal Nilssen-Love, guitarist Terrie Ex and bassist Massimo Pupillo. There's a tremendous breadth to the kind of ground covered by these musicians. At no point do you feel as if the ensemble is running out of ideas or stagnating on one particular …
808s & Dark Grapes II
The internet can be blamed for many things, and while the current consensus seems to be that it is single-handedly responsible for the destruction of the music scene, it's impossible to deny the influence it has had on contemporary rap music. Previously held hostage by industry moneymen, file sharing and social networking has democratized the genre and allowed people to hear what's really going on in the minds of young producers and rappers. Main Attrakionz are one such cottage industry ma…
Hexadecagon
The Octopus Project as a performance piece meant to bring the audience into a world of total sound and image submersion, Hexadecagon is now an album. The special vinyl version of the album is a bit complicated, so I’ll let the band explain: “The vinyl is a gatefold double LP spanning three sides. The fourth contains several unique tracks unavailable on any other format, interlaced in concentric spiraling “roulette grooves,” so that the listener never knows which track they’ll get when they pu…
Old news #8
More archival works from Jim O'Rourke see the light of day on Old News #8. Recorded in 1991-1992. Originally released as part of Disengage by Staalplaat. Special thanks to Geert-Jan Hobijn and Frans de Waard for their years of support. Jeff Cortazzo (trombone), Sue Wolf (cello), Michael Prime (shortwave), Geoff Fontaine (voice), Gretchen Wells, Matt Guerierri, Scott Shell. "Merely" recorded live at DePaul University, 1991 -- Carrie Biolo (percussion). Remastered in 2012, Steamroom Tokyo. This on…
A Double Promo Album By CAN
Vocalist Damo Suzuki’s departure from CAN in 1973 had forced the band to re-evaluate their sound. Now with Michael Karoli and Irmin Schmidt sharing vocal duties, the band had also begun drawing on influences from disco and glam. While still remaining staunchly outside the mainstream, they undoubtedly became more accessible to a wider audience, and soon had a huge fan base in the UK. In fact, just a few months after playing the live show found on this double LP (recorded in Lyon in January …
Popofoni
This 2LP is a reissue of the holy grail of Norwegian free-jazz and electronic music, Popofoni, released by Sonet in 1973. It features compositions by Arne Nordheim, Terje Rypdal, Kåre Kolberg, Gunnar Sønstevold and Alfred Janson played by an extended Jan Garbarek Quintet. The Popofoni-project was initiated after a heated debate on Haagen Ringnes’ TV-show Åpen Post in autumn 1969, which dealt with the subject popmusic. Standing on one side you found the defenders of pop, actress and sin…
A Long Way Around To A Shortcut
Ever shrouded, serpentine by design, the legend of the Sic Alps has at last made its way to the gates of Drag City. The new, first-time-ever-on-vinyl 2xLP reissue of A Long Way Around To A Shortcut is somehow a 'greatest hits' of the golden not-quite-decade of Sic Alps. Well, not quite golden, either. Can gold be tarnished? Can it be done on purpose? If so, Sic Alps are artisans of the highest order -- for their music is the bright, surging sound of ye olde rock and roll radio (and the garages t…
On Patrol
Gorgeous double LP version "If a tree falls in a forest and no one's around, shit still gets crushed. If Cameron Stallones holes up solo-style in a suburban cave and wah-riffs over canned bongos for five straight months, double LPs still get dropped. These are basic life laws. The latest from Mr. Araw is easily his least compromising audio self-portrait to date. Three minute rhythm sketches are stretched into ten minute loop pedal odysseys. Organ solos last for entire vinyl sides. Ambiguou…
Versions
"David Daniell and Douglas McCombs's first collaborative LP, Sycamore (THR 216CD/LP), was assembled from seven hours of in-studio improvisations. Daniell and McCombs sifted through the material looking for their favorite moments, then combined, cross faded, mixed, and matched those moments into something that made sense to them as a long player. For their new release, the double LP Versions, they gave the same seven hours of material to noted recording engineer and producer Bundy K. Brown…
Kill For Love
16 Track Deluxe Double LP on Magenta coloured wax finally available, includes downloiad code redeemable from the label* At long last available for public consumption - Johnny Jewel and co make their loooong overdue return with a gorgeous new album. It's now five years since 'Night Drive' triggered an avalanche of copy-cats and even a film - Nicolas Winding Refn's 'Drive' - and although we were all blessed with Johnny Jewel's sumptuous 'Symmetry, Themes for an Imaginary Film' earlier this…
Allegory Of Allergies
RESTOCKED! april 2009 release: deluxe reissue of emeralds long o/p august 2007 gods of tundra tape, a production-value-heavy edition consisting of two lps (each in their own metallic-ink inner sleeve) housed inside a full-color stoughton gatefold sleeve ; yowza ...for many the original cassette release was the one that made emeralds’ unique combination of stasis-heavy analogue synth wave-shifting stick (certainly was the one that “did it” for me) ; this majestic record-object does everything to …
Weight / Counterweight
"Recorded in April of 2008, Weight/Counterweight, the new release by Bill Dixon marks his return to small group playing, his first trio since the Dixon/Taylor/Oxley Victoriaville recording. The group, assembled by Hall at Dixon's suggestion, marks a new direction in Dixon's instrumentation with no untreated trumpet whatsoever and a barrage on pitched and unpitched concert percussion creating landmark skeletal architecture which Dixon pushes out from into unmediated solos of gravity and we…
ØØ Void
Double LP edition: Lengths of stretched distortion rattle the grey matter, unnervingly slow and severe. With Sunn O)))’s second album, ØØ Void, the sonic misery nurtured to functionality by Greg Anderson and Stephen O’Malley stays simple and repetitive, a tabula rasa having yet to realize the full scope of its potential. With this album, Sunn O))) worked as a three-piece, collaborator Stuart Dalquist coming up with its opener, “Richard,” which is a solid fourteen and a half minutes of be…
Live At Praxis 1984
Decades before his time, political and musical revolutionary, Sun Ra, developed a new plane of cultural existence where black people were all-powerful beings from outer space, sending their intergalactic message through jazz music. Recorded live in 1975 at Cleveland's legendary jazz club, the Smiling Dog Saloon, when Sun Ra and his Arkestra descended on the city for a week-long residency. You can imagine how the uninitiated's jaw must have dropped when Ra and his 15 musicians marched out onto th…