New Arrivals
Nigeria Special Volume 2: Modern Highlife, Afro Sounds & Nigeria
Nigeria Special 2 is the second part to the best selling Nigeria Special album released to critical acclaim in 2007 and further extends the look at the most exciting period in Nigeria’s recording history. The range of styles vary from highlife to Juju and Nigerian blues in the languages of Yoruba, Igbo, Bini and Ijaw. With a peppering of ‘afro’ experimentation the same musical stew pervades volume 2 as it’s predecessor – some artists appear again alongside some new …
Armed Courage
With nary a praising documentary, coffee table photo book or tribute band to their name, The Dead C are nonetheless one of the most respected, longest surviving groups in the history of rock. Still sporting the original band members (Michael Morley on guitar, vocals, Bruce Russell on guitar, Robbie Yeats on drums) from their first assemblage in 1987, The Dead C's renown has a lot to do with their stubborn unwillingness to compromise in any form. With a varied and challenging discography, the ban…
Remains unchanged
The Shadow Ring was founded by guitar player Graham Lambkin and percussionist Darren Harris in Cheriton, Kent, England in 1993. Tim Goss joined the Shadow Ring in 1996 performing on a variety of electronics. The group disbanded in 2003. 'Remains unchanged' is the long-time-coming archival overview of the shadow ring. Spanning the full decade of their existence, 'Remains unchanged' offers an alternate account of the group's labor, told through 20 never-before-heard tracks. From the lumbering mono…
Red Sun
What makes the music of Kasia Głowicka special? First of all space. Deep and extensive. As in ambient music. Built by reverbs, echoes and electronics. Against this background - a piano. Flickering , rippling . Cascades of repeating notes and rhythms. As in minimal music . Tonal associations, but with different development. Clear sounds, distorted, appear then re-appear hear and there as whispers and crackles. As in glitch music. But clearly you hear the skills of a seasoned composer –…
Open
"Following on from their two track LP release, Mindset (2011), Open sees legendary artists-in-resonance The Necks return to the territory they are best known for, a single piece running for over an hour. The piece emanates a calm, immersive stillness throughout. Already The Wire has said that Open "(displays The Necks') astute handling of pacing and momentum, finely honed collective sense of timing, (and) their shared ability to balance at length a group equilibrium". Here the band returns…
Imaginational Anthem Vols. 1-5
"Since 2005, Tompkins Square label's Imaginational Anthem compilations have featured some of the greatest acoustic guitarists in the world, with recordings spanning five decades. More than mere samplers, these albums have served as state-of-the-art dispatches from the front lines of the art form. Imaginational Anthem Vols. 1-5 is a specially priced 6CD box set, limited to 999 copies, featuring the first five volumes in their originals packaging, plus an exclusive live bonus disc from Willia…
Grain
"The new Zs lineup (Sam Hillmer, Greg Fox and Patrick Higgins) sounds very much like a new band, at least as evidenced by the Grain EP. The two side-length tracks (coming in at a total of 42-minutes) bear the marks of Zs' sound - repeated phrases, looped or played in situ; buried drones and harsh electronic tones - but it does sound very much like a new band.
There's an extended ambience to the album that trick perceptions of time. Glitches and waves that last only a minute or three somehow…
Return of the Repressed; Tape Recordings 1984-90
Emily Faryna is a Canadian artist and singer known so far only by real fans of Minimal/Synth-related Wave-music and cassette-culture collectors. Like most singers, she started doing small gigs, slowly making a name for herself. By 1984, she was working under the MoDaMu Records label out of British Columbia in Canada. Her debut album, I’ve Got a Steel Bar in My Head, was released that year (MoDaMu10). The Track Doomed to Fail was released on the Underground Vancouver 1984 Compilation the same yea…
Scott 3
2013 repress. "Scott 3, originally released in 1969, marked a big change in Walker's approach to albums as, for the first time, the record is dominated by his original compositions. In fact, the only other songwriter that makes it onto the album is Walker's idol, Belgium's legendary singer/songwriter Jacques Brel. Scott 3 again features string heavy production courtesy of Wally Scott, though it occasionally moves out of pop ballad territory into a more cinematic feel influenced by Ennio M…
Shut In
'Shut In' is a "Beautiful piece of Easy Listening for Cabin Fever courtesy of Kevin Drumm" says Editions Mego, and who are we to argue? It yields some of the inimitable artist's most beautiful, oneiric sounds since his immense 'Imperial Distortion' album for Hospital Productions; in fact, we wouldn't be surprised if we were told it came from those same sessions. One singular piece unfolds for just over 30 minutes across two sides, slowly radiating a sort of soothing harmonic balm with an …
The Acrylic Widow
Awesome! Quoting Metamkine review "Dylan Nyoukis returns assemblying iconoclastic voices, collages of field recordings, reminding a Tibetan monk lost in a festival of sound poetry or the music concrete by Michel Chion". Four measured tracks, all washing up a new kind of psychedelic moss, fresh thin tendrils, easy to snap, but determined to grow among loose grey matter late on into the next day, and the next and the next. Dry coughs and outta-whack piano chords play into Boy Scout bike repairs. …
Ten Thousand Points Of Light: The 20th Anniversary Edition
Kitsch alert! Worshipper at the shrine of Elvis, fans of unabashed bad taste, followers of pop culture, take note. Ten Thousand Points Of Light, originally released in 1991 and now available on DVD for the very first time, is a wry, understated and terrifically funny look at The Townsends, a suburban Atlanta family who, every holiday season for eight years, transformed their Stone Mountain area brick ranch house into a meteoric blaze of Christmas lights. Known as both "the Christmas House" …
Marvellous Boy: Calypso From West Africa
Marvellous Boy Calypso From West Africa HONEST JON'S RECORDS **** endlessly satisfying' (Boston Phoenix); 'Blending cheeky calypso with rocking highlife — and by turns breezy, wistful and downright uproarious' (Daily Telegraph); 'gems at every turn... weaving highlife, swing, military brass bands, Afro-Cuban jazz, into a hell of a compilation... Honest Jon's have added to the highest order of this simple music of heartbreaking celebration' (Brainwashed). The inter-war dance bands of British West…
Effigy
Shipping by the next week: MIE Records are unbelievably honoured to be releasing Effigy by Pelt this October 29, the first album recorded since 2007 by the acoustic-only droners. Recorded live in June 2011 in an old yoga studio in Mount Horeb, Wisconsin and a decommissioned synagogue called the Gates of Heaven in nearby Madison, the band have laid down their most accomplished and fully realised work to date. Epic in every sense of the word, Effigy is a sprawling journey through their singular pl…
Four Years Older
A new set by the coolest chap in New York City, documenting the development process of a solo electric guitar piece that Alan Licht has been playing out for the last four years. Revered for his work in the Blue Humans and Text Of Light, and a key figure in the pantheon of experimental solo guitar players born in the late '60s such Jim O'Rourke and Oren Ambarchi, Four Years Older is his debut Editions Mego release, representing another peak in a career of mining the rich seams of minimalism, noi…
Nonagon knives
CIP is pleased to present the debut pro-pressed solo CD by Jason Soliday, one of Chicago's finest sound creators - manipulators - disentigrators. I've known Jason for coming up on 13 years- -his gunshop duo was one of the first live noise performances I saw when I moved to Chicago, and over the years I've witnessed many of his projects. In the last few years, though, I feel Jason really hit a stride with his home-built - customized analog synths, and this disc reflects his sensibilities: sharp e…
Dedicated to J.Goebbles
The tape more provocative and irritating of Pierpaolo Zoppo, the Italian sub-genius behind Mauthausen Orchestra, is certainly Dedicated to J. Goebbels . The tracks were recorded during '82-‘83 and offer an overwhelming noise ferric devolves into agonizing nightmare and atrocities sound that recall the dark side of humanity. This is the fourth official reprint on Urashima in Lp and the artwork was approved by the artist.Tracks remastered from the original tape and the record has been pressed on 1…
Space Mirror
Space travel is the dream of many and the reality of few. Since Yuri Gagarin first shed the bonds of earth gravity in 1961, only about 500 humans have made the trip beyond the atmosphere. Ken Camden travels to space while still grounded on terra firma. His vessel of choice is a guitar and some effects with which he journeys on fantastical expeditions and surveys the biggest territory of all, the one between your ears. The glimmering sound fields he forms could be a soundtrack to an epic '60s sci…
A vacant lot to be in
Jason Zeh is a hands-down master of cassette tape and cassette playback devices. Using magnets, metal, plastic, car stereo tape adapters, cassette players without tape, cassette tape loops, modified tape decks, and sand paper (among other devices), Zeh creates two tracks that swim through hiss, grit, and wavering, fractured soundwaves to create some of the most engaging audio I've had the pleasure to hear. This recording reflects not only Zeh's dedication to mastering and refining his source mat…
The Skipper at Home
Jazz-man Henry Franklin, widely respected for his service to the finest jazz players, brought that ineffable quality called soulfulness into play when he made his first record for producer George Porter at Black Jazz, The Skipper. Not unexpectedly, his follow-up affair titled The Skipper at Home teems with the same jaunty uplift. In sync with Franklin's musical spirit on the second recording are returnees Charles Owens on saxophone, Oscar Brashear on trumpet and Kenny Climax on guitar along wi…