Best of 2016
Sonambient : Recordings of Harry Bertoia
Harry Bertoia's Complete Sonambient Collection features all 11 of Bertoia's original records newly restored from their master tapes and housed in replica jackets. A heavy duty box, printed with metallic inks, holds the 11 discs as well as a 100-page book containing a lengthy historical essay, an interview with Harry Bertoia from the Smithsonian Archives of American Art, exclusive Sonambient-era material from the Bertoia archive, modern and archival photos of the Bertoia barn, and reflections on …
Gaetano Liguori Collective Orchestra
The Collective Orchestra was a visionary, short-living creative music collective led by Gaetano Liguori, who was one of the main protagonists of Italian free jazz since the early 70s. It was an important attempt to put together young musicians from the two main towns in Italy, and its respective leading figures: Giorgio Gaslini in Milan and Mario Schiano in Rome. Previous attempts to set up anything similar were, in fact, either frustrated by rivalries between the various personalities or …
Isole del Suono
* 2021 Repress * Previously unreleased, high quality recordings from the italian experimental trio Futuro Antico. The sound experience it's a mysterious synergy between the elements of Nature, a magical encounter between different souls but with elective affinity. Walter Maioli’s ancient and ethnic wind instruments are the breath of the Air, Riccardo Sinigaglia’s electronic spirit produces liquid sequences of the Water, while Dabiré’s african percussions materialize the voice and rhythms of the …
Pèkisyon Funebri
Leaving behind their folk based trilogy, Mohammad return to their own original material. Heavy and concentrated, majestic and dark, ethereal and subtle, Pèkisyon Funebri marks a new era in Mohammad’s existence, unfolding earthly murmurs and ghostly chants over their distinctive seismic diapasons. An exhilarating procession through highly charged sonic plateaus, from the burning core to the silent skies.
Magnetophonics-Australian Underground Music 1978-1984
Outstanding!!! Massive and comprehensive overview of Australian underground music originally released as tapes/cassettes or vinyl between the late '70s and early to mid '80s. The first two LPs, called Edge City Broadcasts are Andrew Lonsdale's (Browning Mummery) selection of rare and essential tracks representing the great variety and diversity of sounds inside the Australian underground music scene of the period. LP3 is dedicated to one side each of label recordings from the Lymph Product…
The Moment In and Of Itself
Instruments which sound like instruments!!! Unbelievable real-time compositions for the unlikely instrumentation of piano, trumpet and violin courtesy of North Of North: Anthony Pateras, Scott Tinkler and Erkki Veltheim. This is no random grimprov get together or free jazz blowout, this is a serious engagement with compositional parameters combined with instrumental virtuosity from a working band. Drawing from Xenakian architextures, Carterian set theory, Carnatic music, sharp-edged point…
OH Audiopoems
Totally stunning double LP record from the elusive The Balsam Flex legendary catalog is now available again thanks to Jan Van Toorn Slowscan imprint. Balsam Flex was a cassette label run by the artist Erik Vonna-Michell in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and evidence of a relatively overlooked moment when a number of London-based British poets were producing work that was influenced by performance art, conceptual art, sound art, text-sound composition, Fluxus, and situationism.One of their most …
Electronic Music from the Seventies and Eighties
2019 Small Repress. This 3LP set contains a selection of seven early works by American composer Carl Stone, all previously unpublished except for “Shing Kee,” which appeared on the 1992 New Albion CD release, Mom’s. Notorious, formerly elusive recordings like "Sukothai," "Shibucho," and "Dong Il Jang" exemplify how Stone masterfully guided his art through the transition period when New Music exited the loft scene of the 1970s for a stab at commercial presence in the 1980s, satisfying both impul…
Pop Electronique
Remarkable record of 1960’s French electronic library music, of a somewhat experimental bent. Cecil Leuter (whose birth name, implausibly, is Roger Roger) was a busy, ‘proper’ bandleader at the time, but it turns out he had a real knack for crafting wildly unusual electronic miniatures. Pop Electronique is full of them! Reissued on Fifth Dimension. France seems to be the secret kingdom of electronic music, experimental music and movie soundtrack music also known as library music. Roger Roger…
Le Soleil, la Mer, le Coeur et les Etoiles
Edition of 300 copies on black vinyl. Released as part of the series 'Collection Archives Des Musiques Industrielles DeFrance', here are two previously unissued tracks from 1982. This music like all first works of Etant Donnes was made without any instrument or effect but is the fruit of a long work on a raw sound material coming only from nature field recordings.
Etant Donnés are two brothers, Eric and Marc Hurtado, who founded this duet in 1980. They realised music, films (from 1982…
Spiral Insana
Limited and numbered edition of 1000 copies on black vinyl. Probably one of Nurse With Wounds most deep and mysterious recordings, with 4 indexed tracks containing 20 listed sequences. Such is Steven Stapleton's Nurse With Wound. The music contained here in, still having it's surreal edge, is more ambient and user friendly than on many other Nurse With Wound outings. Stapleton and guests, Robert Haigh and David Jackman mix prepared piano, percussion, loops and various bric a brac together int…
Fraction Sur Le Temps
At last, in stock now!! Urban Sax's third LP was recorded in 1982 & 1985, and released in 1985 on Celluloid, and it is an absolute diamond - sharing Julian Cope words "Everything starts with this massive (and I mean it...we're basically talking about something the size of an orchestra here) wash of sound, like something dropped wholesale out of the trippier parts of Ligeti's material in the "2001" soundtrack. Then we get swept into the primal repetition of a simple motif...very Magma-like, save …
Sound Awareness
A very trippy album from the enigmatic former member of Sun Ra's Arkestra, and also a lecturer on the east coast. This album's his first, originally issued on the Strata East label – and a space mixture of other-worldly sounds. The renowned French horn player known as Brother Ah (aka Robert Northern) is one of the most prolific and respected musicians in the history of jazz music, with a recorded output spanning more than 30 years. Born in 1934 and raised in the south Bronx, Brother Ah was playi…
Confessione di un commissario di Polizia...
Ortolani in a grand groove! A totally great record – every bit the gem you might expect from the legendary Maestro: a journey through landscapes of sound rather than a collection of musical pieces, with instrumental arrangements that are able to conjure an atmosphere so haunting and obscure it may swallow your soul. The music is mainly bass-infused with all the best styles of the very early 70s on keyboards and electric guitar – used on these jaunty pieces that are somewhere between groovy…
Violenza
The artistic achievement of Egisto Macchi was avant-garde not only for his immense talent and brilliance but for the quality that has managed to infuse every language he used, ranging from instrumental and symphonic music, musical theater, to library sounds more varied and articulated. Towering over all his passion and commitment, is the great inner need to break down the sectarian walls of thinking within catego…
Ubique
Last copies! ** Edition of 250 copies in incredible diorama-style hand-made sleeve. **One more top mysterious trace from the Little Skull legacy: Dean Brown's album Ubique (i.e. "everywhere" in Latin) marks the passing of time and people. This sense of loss is very present though the whole record; not getting around to saying the things we meant to say and making sense of the leftovers. Screaming calmly, Dean Brown's Little Skull has shrunk, even more, until his head is almost just sore meat - t…
Idee 1
2022 Restock, killer price. Last copies Masterpiece!!! If we talk about ideas, we surely talk about “Idee 1”, one of the best collaborations between Massimo Catalano and Remigio Ducros – together with “La fatica”, that will be reprinted in a while – with contributions from the amazing Daniela Casa. Daniela is one of the few women in the “Italian libraries” scene, but she’s more talented than some of her better known male colleagues. If Daniela, and so her husband Ducros, are names linked to a t…
Anthropological Constants
Paradigm Discs, the ever-reliable archivist of the deep underground, presents these incredible soundscapes work: the works on Anthropological Constants straddle a fence between field recording and experimental composition. The intention of each piece is to lead the listener astray in their environment by firstly identifying cues or references, and then slowly transforming them without replacing them with other [more] cues. As one reviewer wrote, the presence of ‘constantly changing soundscapes..…
Move Ever Onward
Cosmic righteousness from Brother Ahh – an enigmatic musician who worked briefly with Sun Ra, and continued an exploration of the sonic heavens on his own! This rare 1975 album features Ahh's Sound Awareness ensemble – a 25 piece group that features a host of voices set to percussion, flutes, and other intimate and evocative instrumentation. The feel's quite hard to describe – kind of a cross between Sun Ra and Moondog, with the righteous style of vocalization that you might find on some of the …
Jengi
Älforjs is a Lisbon based trio and Jengi is the name of their first album. Jengi is the Baka pygmy spirit of the forest, he is in our collective conscious, on our constant look for the wild and the unknown. Their works with which we’re familiar with present a focus on processual minimalism (hypnosis is the holy way to reach the unheard); a rocker’s propulsion derived mostly from the drums; lots of arpeggio work coming in from the double-bass; and André’s electronics working as much as an extra l…