Best of 2018
Locations, Processed (Blue TB7 Series) LP
Chris Watson, originally the keyboard player of Cabaret Voltaire, then a sound recordist for Tyne Tees Television and founder member of The Hafler Trio, is now perhaps best known for his BAFTA-winning location recording for David Attenborough, Birdwatch, Tweet Of The Day, and range of BBC Radio programs. Here, Chris creates an all new sound journey in honor of Bob Moog via a series of his own location recordings, subtlety processed through The Moog Sound Lab's System 55. Almost a return to the p…
Combinations (3) Cd
6 electronic pieces recorded between May 2016 and February 2018 in Auckland, New Zealand. Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi. Richard Francis (aka Eso Steel) has been active as an experimental music composer and improviser since 1996. His work over the years has explored different techniques of sound generation and processing, with a focus on the collection and digital processing of various natural and artificially produced sounds from the surrounding environment. He has released solo and collaborative…
9 Enclosures
9 short pieces, based on cassette recorders and small electronics. Recorded and edited between August 2017 and February 2018. Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi. Luciano Maggiore (Palermo 1980) lives and works in London. Active musician in the field of electroacoustic music, in recent years he has developed a strong interest in the mechanisms of sound diffusion, using speakers and several analogue and digital devices (walkmans, CD players, tape recorders) as principal instruments. His interest is focus…
Pomegranates
Mana is pleased to finally present Pomegranates by Nicolas Jaar as a double LP, with new mastering by D&M. The sleeve is designed by David Rudnick, with labels by Stéphane Jourdan and a new insert created by Jaar collaborator and friend Maziyar Pahlevan. Longer and slower-releasing than his other albums, Pomegranates often parallels the cinematic epic on which it's based (Նռան գույնը), with ideas pursued over long timelines and across dark landscapes, assembling elements and moods from the aest…
De Leon
**small repress available** Gamelan and Capoeira in dub. The collective behind this doesn't like to talk much but their music is beautifully conversational. De Leon is the most organic and percussive of their shifting identities, developed on their Aught project in small-run, clear-shell cassette tape releases over the last few years. They've appreciated a cult interest for their takes on outernational rhythm, field recording, and the tension and relief on the knife-edge of dance music; all deli…
Il Museo Selvatico
Since launching in 2009, Oren Ambarchi’s
Black Truffle has been making quiet waves in the underground,
its growing catalog unfurling the unexpected aural connections
which only appear when a label is led by an artist’s ear and
heart. Initially orbiting around Ambarchi’s own output, and that
of the community which immediately surrounds him, the imprint
has increasingly endeavoured to establish cross-generational
links, issuing and reissuing stunnin…
Acezantez
Originally released in 1977. Rich textural pieces constructed from an unnotatable, intricate interplay of percussive squeals, scrapes and rattles, parched and pitchless woodwinds, and dislocated keyboards On the evidence here, Acezantez founded by the versatile Croatian composer and instrumentalist Dubravko Detoni merit wider recognition. Contemporary Croatian Masterpiece !Here are supposedly stylistic affinities between early Nurse With Wound and Detoni's music. This Detoni (born February 22, 1…
Ustad Abdul Wahid Khan
Fantome Phonographique present a reissue of Ustad Abdul Wahid Khan's self-titled release, originally released on Columbia in 1966. Even though the original recordings are crackly and in low fidelity (but also deeply charming) it seemed necessary to repress this record for its immense historiographic value. These recordings are made available here with new mastering, in as clear fidelity as possible. Fans of Indian classical music will no doubt know the name Ustad Abdul Wahid Khan. He founded the…
Music From The Soundtrack Respectable Families
Dark Tango, mysterious twist, and psychedelic cha-cha-cha! Nothing you
would expect from a '60s Egyptian soundtrack. Romanticist and artistic
all-rounder Abd Al-Rahman Al-Khamissi stands out with this absolute timeless musical production for his 1969 movie Respectable Families. Four abstract instrumental dances to express poetry through music.
Morning Flight
Recorded in 1973, “Morning Flight” by trombonist Hiroshi Fukumura is a stunning modal and spiritual jazz album! Genius work from Japanese trombonist Hiroshi Fukumura – working here at the helm of a twin-trombone group that also features the talents of Shigeharu Mukai – in a style that's filled with soul and free-thinking imagination! The two players work together beautifully here – avoiding any of the cliches of trombone-heavy groups from the past – and instead, using the open-ended Three Blind …
Revival II - The Electronic Tapes 1979-1982
Some artists like Cluster, Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze have become quite popular and synonymous with the Kosmische Electronic music that rode the wave alongside the Krautrock explosion, but also nestled within the explosion of creative electronic music emerging from Germany in the early 70s, others have been left in the vaults of obscurity and discovered only by those jumping into their time capsules and searching high and low for some of the less heard acts. And obscure does not mean for …
Orphee Ballet
Scored for Maurice Béjart's choreography to the 'Orphée Ballet', based on the Greek god Orpheus, this is one of Pierre Henry's finest works of musique concrète, the genre in which Henry was an early innovator and to which he devoted his career. After years working for the French national radio (RTF) and honing his studio chops on radio spots and editing/composition, Henry formed his own studio in 1958 and began working on modern dance and ballet and soundtrack work. Incorporating percussion, ind…
Grundtone, opus 161 (A2 poster + download)
**Edition of 300** Henning Christiansen's handwritten score for 'Grundtone' [fundamental tone], opus 161 from 1984. Offset printed 1:1 reproduction in two colours. Format: A2 – 420 x 594 mm. Includes download code for Henning Christiansen's own recording of the piece. Released in collaboration with The Museum of Contemporary Art and The Henning Christiansen Archive.The piece 'Grundtone' [fundamental tone] (op. 161) is of central importance in the oeuvre of Henning Christiansen. It marks both his…
Le Saut De L'Ange/R.A.S
Never released before on LP, here are the complete original soundtracks of French cult film composer François de Roubaix for director Yves Boisset. Two movies that embody the two sides of Francois de Roubaix's approach to recording. For Le Saut De L'Ange (1971) the self-taught composer wrote an orchestration for some fifty musicians playing strings, woodwinds, brass, and percussion with two distinct solo instruments alternating the main theme: Indian sitar on the one hand and accordion on the ot…
Everywhere At The End Of Time - Stage 5
Penultimate, 5th Stage of The Caretaker’s ‘Everywhere At The End of Time’ series charting severe levels of musical/mental deterioration and sensory detachment through four extended, smudged and hallucinatory side-long pieces. As we near the end, ‘Stage 5’ sees our protagonist enter a near-permanent state of confusion and horror. Mirroring the endemic deterioration of dementia’s latter phases, were pulled through the most extreme entanglements in the series so far; repetition and ruptures, barely…
The Faust Tapes
Faust stand among the most influential creative forces to have emerged from Germany in the late '60s and early '70s. Along with Can, Agitation Free, Neu! and others, they rejected the Anglo-American norms of rock 'n' roll to start a back-to-basics and uniquely Teutonic revolution in sound – later dubbed by the UK press with the semi-derogatory term "krautrock." They would reach near-mythical status through a series of classic albums recorded between 1970 and 1973 at their secluded Wümme studio.A…
Simple Affections
Simple Affections: "I corralled a dream LP that I would want to listen to. Too smelly, too sweet." Album features contributions from: Peter Friel, Jackson Graham, Mark Harwood, Graham Lambkin, Lia Mazzari, Sean McCann, Madalyn Merkey, Michael Pollard, Eric Schmid, Zach Schwartz, Tom James Scott, Patrick Shiroishi, Christina Stanley, Matthew Sullivan, Dennis Tyfus, and Will Gottsegen.
One time pressing. Includes six 5x7″ postcards in printed envelope,
program notes insert by Sean McCann, Scente…
Ttuunneesszz Duh Rruunneesszz (Blue TB7 Series) LP
Charlemagne Palestine first started using electronic instruments in his music in the late 1960s. Palestine on the release: "Electronic instruments were very rare and exotic in the 1960s.There were Moogs around New York but they were only in universities who preciously guarded them from us young composers. So after all this time visiting The Moog Sound Lab is like a dream come true for me... to have so many oscillators all singing together is a truly beautiful experience. I am so glad I am still …
Interrvallissphereee (Blue TB7 Series) LP
Charlemagne Palestine first started using electronic instruments in his music in the late 1960s. Palestine on the release: "Electronic instruments were very rare and exotic in the 1960s.There were Moogs around New York but they were only in universities who preciously guarded them from us young composers. So after all this time visiting The Moog Sound Lab is like a dream come true for me... to have so many oscillators all singing together is a truly beautiful experience. I am so glad I am still …
Polyphonies
Deluxe edition 12 x CD boxset with remastered audio and 112 page booklet. The CD wallets reproduce Pierre Henry’s “concrete paintings” and the booklet features repertoire notes, written mostly by the composer himself.The 12 CD boxset Polyphonies is a mind-blowing summation of more than 50 years work by restlessly pioneering composer, Pierre Henry (9th December 1927 - 5 July 2017) - the undisputed godfather of musique concrète, who laid the groundwork for much of electronic music as we now know i…