Best of 2018
Resin, Parched, Chthonic
Last copies, don't sleep. It's a new year. What better way to to kick it off than with some incredible sounds from a not too distant past, via Fern Recordings. Since launching during the middle 2000s, the Paris based imprint has shown an incredible dedication to under-celebrated efforts of underground sound, offering particular focus to works of field recording, experimentalism, and drone. Their latest release, a long overdue reissue of Small Cruel Party's legendary Resin, Parched, Chthonic, ori…
Improvisations
G.I. Gurdjieff was an Armenian and Greek philosopher, spiritual teacher, and musician, whose teachings of The Fourth Way influenced thousands worldwide and created communities that still exist to this day. His goal was to teach humans to reach a higher consciousness out of the "waking sleep" he considered most to be living in. Music was an important part of his teachings and these brilliant harmonium improvisations were recorded in 1949 in Paris, just a short time before his death. Droning and e…
La Journee
**50 copies copies, wood engraved hand assembled tape box + wood engraved set of
12 cards** All music, recordings, mixing by Guilhem Lacroux. Concrète and Electroacoustic Experiments circa 1995. The diversity of media (digital, analog, high and low definition), techniques (morphing, cut-up, sequence-play) and writing engines (serendipity, madrigalism) make La Journée the exemplum of an era in full gestural, sensitive and temporal metamorphosis
2 / 3
Edition of 300. When it comes to music, time and geography can have a strange effect. Divisions form and dissolve. Things which were heard are can be forgotten. Things which were not are often remembered. As many of us know, this is increasingly the effect of the reissue market, with its radical reappraisals for history, pulling the lost and obscure from the shadows - musical objects now given the ability to travel and gain the attention they deserve. One of the more fascinating and important te…
1 / 3
**Edition of 300, last copies** When it comes to music, time and geography can have a strange effect. Divisions form and dissolve. Things which were heard are can be forgotten. Things which were not are often remembered. As many of us know, this is increasingly the effect of the reissue market, with its radical reappraisals for history, pulling the lost and obscure from the shadows - musical objects now given the ability to travel and gain the attention they deserve. One of the more fascinating …
Death Of The Moon & Other Early Works
Rune Lindblad was born in Gothenburg, Sweden in 1923 and began composing music in 1953. This was a time when composers in Germany and France were feuding over the merits of electronic music made by pure wave oscillators versus musique concrete, which used the tape recorder as its main instrument. Rune Lindblad however did not see these genres as mutually exclusive. In fact, Lindblad extended his work to incorporate other mediums along with his approach to music. Deeply involved with woodcuts and…
Roscoe Holcomb and Wade Ward
Limited edition reissue of this legendary LP, issued onFolkways Records back in 1962. A magical collection of Kentucky's own Roscoe Holcomb, one of the most legendary figures of Appalachian Music and a huge influence on the '60s folk scene, and Wade Ward, a Virginia fiddle and clawhammer banjo player who's style has been often imitated. Playing banjo, guitar, and singing in that beautiful high lonesome sound, Roscoe Holcomb covers the first side of this LP, in his wild and raw style. Wade Ward h…
The South of the East
The South of the East is the debut album from Tenggara Trio, comprising of improvisors from Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. Like previous Lao Ban Records releases it has Yong Yandsen gargling, screeching, skronking and more on the tenor saxophone, but unlike previous releases, "The South of the East" is the most rocking (read: loud, aggressive, driving) release from Lao Ban Records hitherto. The other two members, Ikbal S. Lubys and Dharma both play electric guitar (with efx and objects), but…
Abandonnée/Maléja
La Tène is back with a double invitation to its third full length LP. The hurdy-gurdy/harmonium/percussions trio welcomes two bagpipes (cabrettes and 23” to be exact), and a combo of string instruments (12-string guitar and electric bass). Beyond the instrumentation, we’re looking at a gang of high esteemed guests: Jacques Puech, Louis Jacques, Guilhem Lacroux and Jérémie Sauvage, whom works are given their due credit (with the La Novià collective and its multiple variations, the France group…
Unusual Sounds
Double LP version. "In the heyday of low-budget television and scrappy genre filmmaking, producers who needed a soundtrack for their commercial entertainments could reach for a selection of library music: LPs of stock recordings whose contents fit any mood required. Though at the time, the use of such records was mostly a cost-cutting maneuver for productions that couldn't afford to hire their own composer, the industry soon took on its own life: library publishers became major financial success…
Stuff Combe 5 + Percussion
We Release Jazz presents its fourth release, the first ever official reissue of 1974's Stuff Combe 5 + Percussion, a hard-to-find soul jazz jewel from a cast of illustrious jazzmen led by glorious Swiss drummer, Stuff Combe. The release follows reissues Ryo Fukui's Scenery and Mellow Dream, and Le Cercle Rouge's soundtrack by Eric Demarsan . Recorded in Geneva, Stuff Combe 5 + Percussion finds Stuff Combe conducting an all-star ensemble consisting of Bob Jacquillard on bass, Francy Boland (The C…
Ambient 1 (Music For Airports)
Brian Eno's Ambient album from 1982 has been Half Speed Mastered by Miles Showell at Abbey Road Studios, London and is now presented in a gatefold sleeve on 2 heavy weight albums which are played at 45rpm for a superior listening experience. Now housed in a gatefold sleeve with an Obi and Abbey Road Certificate. Contains a Download Voucher Released 16th November 2018. Available for pre-order now. Deluxe, limited edition. Though not the earliest entry in the genre (which Eno makes no claim to hav…
The Cymbals 1973
**Completely sold-out at source, few copies avaialble** Cymbals has finally landed… and brought a 2nd saucer with it! Originally recorded for the Impulse! jazz label in ’73, Cymbals makes its first legitimate release on vinyl, paired with a second LP of unheard material from the same sessions. Hear Sun Ra’s Baroque soundscapes, electrolytic clusters and dithering Moogs catalyze images of monoliths, space stations, computers malfunctioning and galaxies imploding on pristine red and green vinyl wi…
Eclipse
Limited to 300 copies on splatter vinyl. Reissue of extremely rare kosmische/electronic/experimental/ambient album by Didier Bocquet, originally released in 1977 on his own Kiosque D'Orphe label, in 100 copies, each with a hand-drawn/written cover effort by the artist. Inspired by the first wave of german kosmische sound-travellers (Klaus Schulze and Tangerine Dream and the whole Berlin School spring inmediately to mind) but retaining that typical french urgency that places it close to Heldon / …
Ann Arbor
Reissue of an obscure 1978 LP in Ash-Ra Tempel/Stooges vein. The tracks forming Tötenköpfs first album were composed between 1970 and 1976 by the Frenchman Bruno Rooke. Eventually, they have been put to tape (in gogolphonic sound) during his stay in Karlstad (Sweden) in February-March 1978. Rooke (vocals, drums, keyboards, percussions) recorded with the help of his cousin Erland Malberg (bass, guitar, effects) and a friend of the latter, Mats Meyer-Lie (guitar, tapes, violin), a chaotic album ti…
Evoluzione Interiore
Juri Camisasca is one of the towering artists of Italy’s remarkable musical avant-garde. Evolving across the 1960’s, 70’s, 80’s, as it continues today, this movement suffered under a long-lasting, one sided isolation - unheard by the world beyond. Recently, under the care of labels like Black Sweat, it has begin to emerge from the shadows, gathering a momentum of marvel and praise. Over the years, beginning with 1974’s legendary La Finestra Dentro, Camisasca has released a slow trickle of carefu…
Standing Waters
The Italian guitarist Maurizio Abate is a rare breed - an experimental musician from Europe working within, and expanding the American tradition of Guitar Soli, an idiom first pioneered by John Fahey. Abate initially emerged within a diverse series of collaborative released over a decade ago, but, as the years passed, a love for his instrument, with inspiration provided by Fahey’s indication of its potential for application as a one man orchestra, prompted to him to embark on a pursuit of solo …
Ke I Te Ki
Room40 release Akio Suzuki and Aki Onda's Ke I Te Ki. "Akio Suzuki and I have been performing together frequently for the last five years; we have a tendency to perceive sound as space, or to always consider sound in relation to space. We don't usually hear sound sources as they actually are, since they are always modified by a space's acoustics and its reflections, absorptions, and attenuation. Sound is affected by the conditions and characteristics of a particular setting. We respond to the ex…
États-Unis Bundle II
**5LP Bundle with Tote Bag**Since its quiet beginnings back in 2011, the San Fransisco based imprint, Superior Viaduct, has come to hold a dominant place in the cultural landscape, stitching an intertwined narrative, crossing multiple genres, between countless forms and periods of counter-cultural music. In 2017 the label launched one of its most interesting and ambitious projects to date, their new sub-label Etats Units, a sonic intervention - an open challenge to how connections in sound are f…
Terminal Drive
Terminal Drive is studio recording of a mythical piece of electro-acoustic music composed and performed in 1975 by Allen Ravenstine (b. May 9, 1950 in Canton, OH) with assistance from Albert Dennis on string bass. Terminal Drive’s significance in terms of Cleveland underground music cannot be understated and has been cited as partially responsible for Ravenstine’s invitation to co-form the musical unit Pere Ubu in September 1975. Ravenstine gained recognition for his unusual and inventive synthe…