New Arrivals
Musica Endoscopica
In its constant pursue of the lost treasures of the Italian avant-garde music, Die Schachtel in collaboration with the University of Padua has recovered from the ashes one of the lost and truly shining diamond of the early electronic/digital scene of the 60s and 70s. After more than two years of painstaking research and audio restoration, Die Schachtel is proud to present a new release dedicated to Teresa Rampazzi, a seminal yet very little known female Italian composer/musician, Founder of …
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…
Traba
"Following the blurry shoegaze ambience of his revelatory 'Navigare' LP for Miasmah, former Slowdive drummer Simon Scott applies his melancholy treatments to four tracks of widescreen, textured ambience for Chicago's Immune label. 'Traba' is distinguished from his debut by a swirling aquatic theme embedded in the titles and the nautical nature of the recordings. The mass of 'She Came From The Sea' is flooded with slow moving currents of darkness while at the surface we can hear lighter, m…
(Fake) The Facts
After the runaway success of the Akita/Gustafsson/O'Rourke LP One Bird Two Bird (DEMEGO 016LP), Swedish sax legend Mats Gustafsson returns to Editions Mego with another storming collaboration. Now a resident of Vienna, he teamed up with experimental artists dieb13 and Martin Siewert for a live and studio session. (Fake) The Facts is the result. A dense fog of sound comes from all directions, but whereas the general impetus is a full-on attack, the trio finds enough restraint to create a deepe…
…On Sea-Faring Isolation
"A casual interweb cruiser could be forgiven for confusing Dolphins Into The Future the “band” (aka the one-man tape-loop blue-age ambient project executed by Belgian Cetacean Nation ambassador Lieven Martens) with Dolphins Into The Future the book (written by dimensional traveler Joan Ocean concerning her 20-year-long real life spirit quest to commune with a school of 200 wild Hawaiian Spinner dolphins). And, to be fair, they’re a LOT alike. Both deal heavily in trippy, drifting logics, vibrati…
Beyond Civilized and Primitive
he new solo album by American maverick trumpeter Peter Evans, titled after a thought provoking essay by philosopher Ran Prieur, NY trumpeter Peter Evans uses the studio as a compositional tool via overdubbing and looping to create epic virtual duos that push the trumpeter to the extreme. "Titled after a thought provoking essay by philosopher Ran Prieur, it is a heavyweight pressing and comes housed in hand screenprinted wrap around sleeves featuring the forceful brushwork of 15 year old artist O…
Kiri No Oto
Lawrence English's epic masterpiece - finally available on vinyl for the first time. Strictly limited edition - Initial copies come on white vinyl* One of the most memorable and absorbing albums released by the wonderful Touch label in recent years, "Kiri No Oto" was first released by them on CD in 2008 and has spent much of the intervening time lodged in our minds as one of the finer drone/field recording albums to have been made this century. Kiri No Oto (a Japanese phrase meaning 'sound…
Zug
Schnitzler’s Zug is one of the most important and first electronic minimalist works that were published in the 70s. Almost simultaneously with Kraftwerk’s groundbreaking “Autobahn” Zug appeared on the legendary “the red cassette“. The release is rounded off with a remix of Con-Fan Stefan Betke aka Pole. Pole and Kassian Troyer (Radian) have mastered the record. Another remix is contributed by “borngräber and strüver“.
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…
Oceans Of Silver & Blood
Oceans of Silver and Blood are Joachim Nordwall : Roland S1000 Modular Synth and Mark Wastell : 32 Paiste Tam Tam. This recording was made at Goldsmiths College, London on December 10 2007 by Jonathan McHugh. Mixed and mastered by Jonathan McHugh. Cover design by Alisa Wolfson. Released in conjuction with their performance at Lampo, Chicago, 07 June 2008. Limited to 100 copies.
Black Summit
Strictly limited to 400 copies only, already sold out at source* Garden Söund is the rewarding collaboration of two hugely respected outfits: Barn Owl and Eternal Tapestry. Word of the album has spread like wildfire on a vast midwest plain, hence all 400 copies are sold out at source. 'Black Summit' finds the commonalities in Barn Owl's epic desert scapes and the crushingly potent psychedelia of Jed Bindeman's Eternal Tapestry with immeasurable success. The two characters stalk moonlit ca…
Pre Language
Right on cue, the third annual report from Chicago's Disappears is submitted for your consideration. Following up on the acclaimed Guider album released just over a year ago, and with new drummer Steve Shelley now fully integrated into the group, these songs were again forged into proper shape during live shows before heading to the studio and the tape machine. Never ones to dither or be indecisive, it's a full-bore assault from the opening track to the last as Disappears attack these new…
World Complete
Harmonizer, or as lovingly referred to as HARMO around these parts is the Vermont duo of Toby Aronson and Greg Davis, whose previous effort, their self-titled debut on Aronson's own stellar NNA Tapes label was the definitive 5th world statement, and solidified them as sensais in the koan of new drone worship shared by the likes of fellow melodic noisers Caboladies and OPN. In fact Greg Davis (Kranky, Carpark) is zone veteran shredder whose explorations into pastoral electronics have been w…
The Ghosts Of Bush
Special Edition - White Vinyl. 3rd and final pressing limited to 400 copies for the world** Having already created a huge amount of interest, 'The Ghosts Of Bush' is finally here on a limited vinyl pressing and is easily one of the most pertinent and interesting Radiophonic and hauntological artefacts we've had the pleasure of stocking in recent years. Created by World Service studio manager Robin The Fog, 'The Ghosts of Bush' Consists entirely of nocturnal location recordings made by him at Bus…
Forever Falling Toward The Sky
Forever Falling Toward the Sky is the first ever release by Bay Area based Vestals, AKA Lisa McGee. A taught set of haunting electric ballads, these five tracks weave together a number of layered guitars and vocals into a smokey tapestry of blown electricity. Rather than the ephemeral drones McGee has been involved with recently, most notably the group-mind ensemble Portraits & the duo Higuma, Vestals retains the clarity of song, with these hypnotic gyms having been slowly carved out over…
Ghost with chains
Long-running Twin Cities horsepower trio Daughters Of The Sun have been subtly chugging out their faded-tattoo spirit-in-the-sky psych exhaust for at least half a decade now but we didn’t catch the drift till March ’09, when we got to witness a packed post-midnight smoke-soaked Minneapolis loft set and waved our lighter with the masses. Ghost With Chains is their third official full-length (not including some EPs and a killer split) and it’s as beautifully moon-burnt and highway-swept as anythin…
Chew Your Food
The performance on this LP was recorded live at Roulette in New York last year. I have appreciated Knuffke's playing and music before, and I will do it again here. His tone is always full and warm, and he's a master at taking tough bends easily. The music is jazz in its purest sense : improvisational joy and emotional expressivity in a compact form. There is nothing but pulse in the pieces they play, even if the rhythms are not always explicit or when there are no patterns, the three musici…
Coil Sea
The idea for the Coil Sea record came about after Arbouretum had finished our Summer 2009 European tour. The band had some time off, and I thought it would be interesting to put a session together consisting of musicians that I knew and had played with, but hadn't all played with each other. The goal was to create improvised music without much in the way of set ideas or editorial input from my end, and to hope that we could, over the course of the session, become comfortable enough playing…
Oh Me Oh My... The Way The Day Goes By The Sun Is Setting Dogs A
To say Devendra Banhart is unique is an absurd understatement. When I first heard the voice of this completely unknown, precociously talented 21-year-old songwriter, I could not believe it. His occasionally warbling falsetto is alternately bizarre, comical, and often a little frightening. Coupled with his advanced finger-picking guitar style - which itself often veers schizophrenically from gentle grooves into jolting, non-rhythmic stabs and weird harmonic flights of chaos -- and the wildly surr…
At WKCR Studios NY 12-8-74
Massively unlikely unearthing of a previously unreleased live radio broadcast from legendary free jazz saxophonist Charles Tyler in a hand-numbered edition of only 99 copies: Tyler is a comparatively unsung player compared to the better known free music titans but his was a fascinating career, playing alongside Albert Ayler on Bells and Spirits Rejoice, cutting a hands-down classic run of private LPs – Eastern Man Alone on ESP Disk, Voyage From Jericho and Live In Europe, 1978’s Saga Of Th…