New Arrivals
Free Action
2008 release. "A deep excursion into the laboratory of Germany's most important avant-garde jazz musician. A milestone of breaking down barriers between genres. Feat. Jean-Luc Ponty (Zappa, Mahavishnu). Originally released on MPS in 1967. Unique gatefold cardboard packaging."
Quite a way away
To say that the last few years of Gareth Dickson’s life have been tumultuous would be an understatement. In 2007 he fell in love with a girl from South America, packed up a few essentials from his life in Scotland, and moved to the Argentinian countryside. It didn’t turn all fairy tale at that point, however. While there he was shot at, attacked by dogs, and was involved in a very close call when the passenger plane he took to a little town in the Andes was forced down after an engine cau…
Papercuts Theater
AWESOMEEEE!!!! The construction of this latest opus from C. Spencer Yeh's Burning Star Core comes from the collaging of sixty-six live recordings, captured over the course of an eleven year-period. The editing time for this monstrous undertaking was fairly substantial too, taking up two further years of on-and-off assembly. In addition to Yeh himself, the list of contributors takes in an expansive cast of notable noise and improv artists, including Hair Police's Mike Connelly, Trevor Tre…
Silent Partner
There’s probably not much to say about punk’s continued existence. Like jazz or sitcoms or party politics, it just carries on eating and breathing and shitting and propogating. It’s only interesting when someone comes along trying to advance the form. Like “Arrested Development” or Dennis Kucinich, they’re usually forgotten. This would all be relevant if Neptune were a punk band, which we’re not at all sure is the case. They create a sense of undermining the status quo, which is pretty pun…
Charlemagne & Pippin
Single 35+ minute excursion in typical BtC drones w/ added violin. Really organic sounding, loads of textures.
Kontinent Varèse
On"Kontinent Varèse" col legno has assembled seven major works of a pioneer of electronic music, performed e.g. by the Ensemble Modern Orchestra, the RSO Vienna and Martin Grubinger!Edgar Varèse is regarded as one of the pioneers of New Music, and with good reason. His piece “Ionisation” was the first-ever composition written exclusively for percussion ensemble to be performed in a traditional concert hall setting; and he explored and searched intensely for sonic experiences. Varèse integra…
Spoils
For this latest album Caledonian folk impresario Alasdair Roberts teams up with expected collaborators like Alex Neilson (whose drumming and percussion work has illuminated many a free-folk record over recent years, a few of which Roberts has been involved with) and more unusual contributors such as Niko-Matti Ahti of Fonal's Kiila. Perhaps more than ever, Roberts' music invites comparisons to Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, traveling sufficiently far from the trad songwriting fold to be thought of as 'a…
Hairdryer Peace
Finally available on CD. Ranked 3rd best album of 2008 in The Wire magazine. Intensely psychedelic and mixed for maximum hallucinations, this marks a pretty heavy departure from the Hospitals of old. Heavy tranced-out riffs, weird pop, cracked folk, disorienting noise, paranoid vibes. Main Hospital Adam Stonehouse with Rob Enbom & Rod Meyer from Eat Skull and Chris Gunn from The Hunches. The most forward-thinking album of 2008 but also an album of songs with actual emotional intensity. Not a par…
Untitled #284
'untitled #284' was created in 2011 by extensive evolutionary transformation of original environmental recordings made in Lisbon during the year of 1992. These sources were recovered for a commission of the Teatro Municipal Maria Matos, where the composition was premiered on 16 July 2011.
Danza de la Vida
The follow-up to our "Danza de la Muerte" compilation focuses on the more song orientated Syntactic releases. Also, you will find tracks that were planned as Syntactic or Klanggalerie 7"s, but never made it onto vinyl. The track list reads as follows: Andrew Liles - In this vegetable Glass of Nature Le Zappalot (Rehberg/Bauer/Birnbach) - Erika goes to Leopoldau O Yuki Conjugate - Madal (Circular…
Oltre
The best 12k/LINE release in ages - dark, Lynchian eroded tape-loops and analogue menace. ESSENTIAL PURCHASE! (boomkat) "The Transparence dubplate, developed at O ' in Milan, Italy, works within the physical limitations of the vinyl medium, employing the object as sound source and also sound medium, to become an instrument in its own right. Using the non-linear acoustics of the gallery at O', the dubplate was recorded, and later cut to disc in Berlin, at very low volume. This ephemeral audi…
Sound Is
"Sound Is, is delightfully not what I had expected when this fine disc arrived, a beautiful soundscape, awash with more layerings and hypnotic cinematic virtues than I would ever hope to find. Though while saying that, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the ultra fine hazy jazz that both effortlessly, and rambunctiously flows through this release, and stands not starkly in juxtaposition to the soundscape, but gives it the vibrant life necessary to keep you quietly swinging at 4 in the mornin…
Tasogare: Live in Tokyo
Recorded live on April 10th and 11th, 2010, Tasogare: Live in Tokyo documents the performances of five 12k artists at two temples in Tokyo, Japan. Komyoji Temple (April 10th) saw the first-ever performance in Japan by Australia’s Solo Andata, known for creating deep, textured music with found objects, homemade instruments and very little in the way of electronics or software tricks. The duo was joined by 12k veteran Sawako whose voice and delicate computer work were accompanied by guitarist Hofl…
Making Words
Realized at the Lutheran Church of the Messiah in Brooklyn, New York, April of 2010.Recorded live, mixed, and mastered by Adam Diller.Featuring the invaluable contributions of: Ann Adachi (flute), Adam Diller (tenor saxophone), Tucker Dulin (trombone), Kenny Wang (viola), Andrew Lafkas (bass, composition), Margarida Garcia (electric guitar), Gill Arno (electronics), Keiko Uenishi (electronics), Barry Weisblat (electronics), Bryan Eubanks (electronics), Sean Meehan (snare drum and cymbals)
Solo Andata
12k presents Australian duo Solo Andata along with their second album, self-titled. Translated literally from the Italian as 'one way,' Solo Andata portrays the theme of a one-way journey that moves from (and represents a thread between) water and land, fluid/stasis, cold/hot. Following Solo Andata's debut album Fyris Swan (Hefty, 2006) and their 12k inception on Live in Melbourne, Solo Andata presents us with an ambient affair, with dark drones coupled with ethereal sonic environments. It could…
Brame (et autres mouvements d'automne)
Marc and Olivier Namblard did some recordings of deer during the rutting season. Deer bellow and listen. Marc and Olivier work also with the idea of sound trap. They find a place where animals go through, they set up the recording equipment and come back the day after. Beautifull and amazing recordings. Comes with photos from David Hackel et Marc Namblard. Texts in French and English.
Kippschwingungen
In 2007, Frank Bretschneider was invited to compose music for the Subharchord, a unique electronic instrument developed during the 1960’s at the RFZ, the technical center for radio and television of the East German postal service. Built in a limited edition of eight machines total, only three Subharcords (in Vienna, Trondheim and Berlin) are believed to survive to this day. The Subharchord is, broadly defined, a subharmonic sound generator, comparable soundwise to the Mixturtrautonium. It’s sugg…
Nuojuva halava
The Preservation label presents Nuojuva Halava, the debut album from Helsinki, Finland’s Ous Mal. Ous Mal is the recording project for 22-year old Olli Aarni. With previous CD-R releases for both Finland’s 267-Lattajjaa and the UK’s Under The Spire, Ous Mal has already gained fine notice for his expansive sound, further developed in widescreen ways on Nuojuva Halava, his first full-length. Finding common ground between the dusty tenor of old-school hip hop cassettes and the fog of deep ambience …
A Small Turn Of Human Kindness
Athens weirdcore trio Harvey Milk is a blessedly difficult band to “know.” They frustrate category, aesthetic response, and heavy music scene politics in estimable, admirable ways. On the heels of their feedback-saturated return to recording – first the somewhat tentative Special Wishes and then 2008’s Life . . . the Best Game in Town – they return with A Small Turn of Human Kindness, an album named after the very first track on their 1996 debut. A seven-part dirge, this album continues …
Book of Beyond
"Ben Reynolds is one of the newer voices from the same UK scene that includes Ashtray Navigations and many of the VHF celebrities (Sunroof!, Vibracathedral Orchestra, Richard Youngs, etc.) It should be of little surprise then that Book of Beyond fits very nicely among the recordings of those other artists -- noise/junk drone. As in his previous recordings, this at times dissolves into more acoustic offerings, but the Fahey influence appears to be mostly gone, and what remains in the quie…