New Arrivals
Oppenheimer Analysis
The first release from Minimal Wave, Oppenheimer Analysis, is back by popular demand. The EP is a second pressing limited edition (500 copies) on 180 gram vinyl of selected tracks from the Oppenheimer Analysis cassette entitled “New Mexico” released in 1982, as well as two others that were previously unreleased. Andy Oppenheimer (nuclear weapons consultant) and Martin Lloyd (previously involved in the Survival Label, also known for his project “Analysis”) formed Oppenheimer Analysis in the early…
Fugue
I began writing about this Tape & Bill Wells 'Fugue' record yesterday but I gave up as the words just were not coming to me. I guess that's probably a good sign though as I was just kind of getting into the melancholy zone of the record, which certainly is a thing of beauty. Wells' guitar playing is delicate and magical. The Tape guys really give him space to do his thing adding wonderful little details and twinkles into the mix. This quite simply is the prettiest, most charming record I …
Lip Syncing to Verme
As a slow motion Stan Brakhage on K, this last and definitive new album from Aaron Dilloway is fluid and cinematic. After the monumental Chain Shot Lp and a furious live activity, the Mid West's mad tape-scientist is back to take your hand and dive you in a buzzy ocean of muddy water loops. Welcome to this creepy journey to the south of heaven, here you can just crawl like a worm.
Irrlicht
Vinyl version of Klaus Schulze's first solo album, from 1972. "After stints in the legendary bands Tangerine Dream and Ash Ra Tempel, Irrlicht was Klaus Schulze's first stab at a a solo project. He had radical ideas for the newly developed electronic music scene which are blatantly present here. Equipped with a small orchestra, 4-track, guitar, percussion, organ, and a little electronic gadgetry, he created a 'cosmic classic'. No synthesizers were used here, just a remarkable use of sampl…
Brighter summer day
CS Yeh: violin, electronics (side A), computer (side B). Chris Rosing: additional climax electronics (side A). Full color heavy cover, LP. Edition of 500. Released February 2002. Burning Star Core's first vinyl full-length and first widely available recording after numerous private releases that began surfacing in 1993. Massive layers of sustained sound driven thru violins and electronics direct to climax -- backed by broken organs dropped into shifting darkness and cracked computer hypn…
ABCDEFG-HIJKLMNOP-QRSTUV-WXYZ
Starring’s ABCDEFG-HIJKLMNOP-QRSTUV-WXYZ combines minimalist musical patterns with dreamy poetry to create a new style front-woman Clara Hunter likes to call “sparkle prog.” It captures the frenetic energy of the band’s live show, but here it is overlain with a new palate of synthesizers, delay effects, drum processing, aux percussion, and vocals that create delicate, but sometimes radical juxtapositions between the lyrical and the experimental. Though songs like “the best” and “aphonia” …
The Inner Treaty
With the wake of his blessed collab with The Congos and his 'Ancient Romans' side still shimmering in our memory, Cameron Stallones returns from his mystic regressions to present a sixth solo LP as Sun Araw. With his return comes a startlingly fresh-faced clarity to his sound, as though millenia of metaphysical sonic travel have dislodged the overbuild of dusty amp wax and really let some cosmic sunshine thru. It's perhaps also down to some assistance in the final process from Pete Kember…
Arctic Hysteria
Original 1981 release! Slava Ranko(aka Don Philippi) released only one album, Arctic Hysteria (1981), that quotes John Cage, Brian Eno, minimalism, Indian music Don Philippi (October 2 1930-January 26 1993) was a noted translator of Japanese and Ainu and a musician.Born in Los Angeles, Philippi studied at the University of Southern California before going to Japan in 1957 on a Fulbright scholarship to study at the Kokugakuin University. In Japan he became an expert in classical Japanese an…
The Fugitives
**Limited edition of 300 housed in handmade silkscreened sleeve. Tipped for fans of Atelecine, Carter Tutti Void, Factory Floor** Ninni Morgia and Silvia Kastel make their first appearance as Control Unit on Italy's freshly minted Backwards label. Guitarist Ninni Morgia is a respected member of the New York underground scene, known for his work with La Otracina for Holy Mountain and Ultramarine Records. His co-conspirator Silvia Kastel was a willing participant in his Ninni Morgia Control …
Warmth
Even though Warmth main man Steev Thompson still appears to be incommunicado, totally epic recordings continue to surface. Before Roxanne Jean Polise was officially over and Steev still lived in Chicago, he joined up with another then-Chicago resident Branden Diven of Quilts/American Grizzly Records. The jams that were created filled a couple of CD-Rs and the Warmth side of the split with Quintana Roo on Not Not Fun. This LP consists of a remixed and edited version of the original CD-R ru…
Off Duty
As if the music of lysergic, lo-fi drugdub one man band Sun Araw wasn't flipped out and damaged enough, on this latest joint, those already tweaked and twisted sounds get even more far out, the vibe WAY druggier and spacier, a 26 minute blast of crumbling wah-guitar laced psychdub comedown in the form of three skull caving soul freeing innerspace excursions."Last Chants" begins with a dense swirling cloud of white noise and damaged effects, shot through with barely there melodies, and loose detu…
Ever And Anon
The mythical LAFMS collective Smegma really needs no introduction, where would we all be without them? How many bands were so ahead of their time (1973!), and have been for so long, like Smegma have? Well, here they are with a brand new LP of their famous mix of free jazz, industrial noise, improvisation, straight-up weird music so typical of these masters / US freaks. On the opening track, they are riding on the amazing drums of historical member Dennis Duck (of Dream Syndicate) to pay h…
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 Paris 4.IX.86
Reissue of a classic tape from 1986. Bruno Cossano released 4 tapes thoughtout the 80s and appeared on various compilations such as the 'Hate's our belief' tape ion Aquilifer Sodality. Now for the firs time this Italian power electronics master can be heard on vinyl with some of his most powerfull and intense stuff.
Hallway Of Mirrors
VHF is releasing a bunch of solo guitar dudes over the next few weeks. Here's one of 'em! It's an album from New York's Alexander Turnquist called Hallway of Mirrors. It says that above so it's kinda pointless me saying that. Having said that the New York thing was a new bit of info so it's not all filler! I've not heard this chap before but I was rather taken with him on first listen. It's not a million miles away from the likes of James Blackshaw.... ie extreme 12 string fingerpluckery which i…
Built For Nothing
"Suburban Michigan is a breeding ground where every weirdo has a label, a band, and a handful of secret/under the radar collaborative projects. Here Graveyard's Ben Hall and Lambsbread's Zac Davis create a monolithic one-sider influenced by too many private press jazz records and abstract instrumentalism. Davis turns in his effect pedals for nothing; pure clean tones plucked up and down scales and bridges so uniquely that it is easy to confuse the guitar for a sax. Ben Hall drums like a man with…
Red, Black And Green
Originally produced and issued by charles 'bobo' shaw himself, red, black & green, by the band "solidarity unit, inc." documents what happened at "the bag room" in st. louis, mo, the day jimi hendrix died. shaw & the ten piece group produce a raw, teeming clattering sound, captured in a gloriously blunt low-res recording as stark as the b&w cover art. lake & bowie were by this time already powerful soloists, & both declaim fervently and damn near relentlessly over shaw's swaggering themes. de…
Alkyle
First released of Malass aka Vincent Malassis. Project from experimentation and improvisation based on the research for organic textures and maximum musical expression. The purpose of this approach is to create a balance between noise, dissonance and melody. Thought as a filmic trip that allows emotion thanks to a sound design inspired from american minimalism and french concrete music. Ambient music mixed analogically in order to get a landscape of feedback, reverb and echoes which acts on both…
Auf Wiedersehen
A lasting gravestone release from Philadelphia's Clockcleaner packs in more drama than your mama with enough bad attitude to make the food court cry. Since 2007's release of "Babylon Rules", Clockcleaner have toured the trailer park areas of the United States as well as conquering the scorched earth of Australia. During this time the band recorded this 4 song EP length record that sharpens their midnight howl in a direction only hinted at in previous releases. The band now operates in a d…
God Is Saying This To You...
More than a mere odds-n-ends collection, Kurt Vile’s latest LP is a compilation of tracks from Overnite KV, a tour-only CDR, along with a handful of extra tracks recorded specifically for this release. Here we find Kurt solo, four-trackin’ as usual, and blowing minds with his mix of bluegrass guitar, blazed singer-songwriterisms, and the knowledge of how to balance these contexts out with laidback precision. Psychedelic to its core, these twelve tracks speak to the will of the casual perf…