Best of 2018
A Cordes et a Cris
In the continuity of the two previous albums "Amir" and "Varech", Henri Texier records in 1979 the album : "A Cordes et à Cris" but with some guest for some titles musicians such as pianist Gordon Beck and violinist Didier Lockwood. While A Cordes et à Cris represents the third element in the trilogy of albums begun by Amir and Varech, it is was his first working with JMS, making it all that much more noteworthy as it reemerges in the imprint’s hands today. Recorded and released in 1979, it enc…
Zero Gravity
**strictly limited edition of 500 copies** Nik's last album, Zero Gravity (Narco NR123) came under the Nik Pascal name and had a fantastic side long piece on the title track which reminisces of the works of Cluster. B side features four tracks that also bear some Conrad Schnitzler reminiscences. This was to be Nik's last LP before he would sell all his synths to ex car racer and future electronic/ambient music star Steve Roach. Besides his musical explorations, Nik was also an interesting painte…
Magnetic Web
Magnetic Web was released in 1973. It appeared under the Nik Pascal monicker and showed a clear evolution in sound, favoured by the addition of an Arp 2600 and some rhythm boxes. It also included percussions and cymbals. The Two Headed Dog site thinks "this is his masterpiece in all of its acid-laced glory."Besides his musical explorations, Nik was also an interesting painter. His paintings are auctioned from time to time, and are consciousness expanding works influenced by abstract cubism and s…
The Sixth Ear
**strictly limited edition of 500 copies** 1972 saw the release of The Sixth Ear (Narco NR666), this time credited to Nik Pascal. A more complex work than Beyond The End..., it adds consistent rhythmic patterns to the mix with the addition of bongoes and also explores some interesting chord progressions. Besides his musical explorations, Nik was also an interesting painter. His paintings are auctioned from time to time, and are consciousness expanding works influenced by abstract cubism and surr…
Numbers
If you check the credits of The Rolling Stones' Goats Head Soup LP from 1973 you'll find a certain "Pascal" listed on the percussion section. That is none other than Los Angeles based artist Nicolas Pascal Raicevik (1933-1994), aka 107-34-8933, aka Head, aka Nik Pascal, aka Nik Raicevic. Besides his hitting the bongoes on the Stones album, Nik was a great artist on his own, both as a painter and as a musician. As a musician, he was a pioneer in the use of synthesizers, preceeding the Berlin scho…
Hi-Fi Is Sweeping the Country
Populäre Mechanik is an improvisational group from Berlin playing a unique amalgam of Fluxus-inspired garage rock, free jazz, and live electronics. It was originally founded in the early 1980s by Wolfgang Seidel who had previously been the original drummer for West-Berlin leftist rock band Ton Steine Scherben and after that became a long-time collaborator of Conrad Schnitzler with whom he played in Kluster and Eruption, as well as in duo recordings. Recently, Seidel emerged as an author and has …
The Nazgul
Lost-in-time kosmische/kraut/avant-garde artifact produced by Toby Robinson, aka The Mad Twiddler, circa 1975 for his private Pyramid label. From the moment they emerged during the mid 90’s, mystery has swirled around Psi-Fi’s six Krautrock gems. Each, the label claimed, had been recorded for the long lost Pyramid label, based in Cologne during the 1970’s. Embraced and loved by many, others cried hoax. Some ventured further, implicating the perpetrator - the voice behind this assembly of drifti…
Rare & Unreleased 1971-1998
Restockd, reduced price. WRWTFWW Records announce the release of Rare & Unreleased 1971-1998, a collection of never-heard and hard-to-find works by Swiss music pioneer and synth super wizard Bruno Spoerri. Rare & Unreleased 1971-1998 gives a fascinating glimpse into Bruno Spoerri's incredibly inventive repertoire, collecting tracks from projects as diverse as commissioned music for trade fairs, the Swiss railroads, or the union of Swiss cheese makers(!), soundtracks for TV shows about ecology, l…
One Man Sessions Volume 2 // Unprepared Piano
After the oneiric journey through synthesizers on Volume 1, entitled Synthesis (2018), Massimo Martellotta (founding member of Calibro 35) returns with the second volume of One Man Sessions
exploring the tonal possibilities of the classical instrument par
excellence: the piano. The instrument is at the center of the scene, and
the prepared piano in the manner of John Cage is here
decontextualized and freely "In/Prepared" and reinvented in a very
personal way, placing objects of common use o…
A Dance with Fred Astaire
A Dance with Fred Astaire is an extraordinary collection of anecdotes and rare ephemera from the life of legendary artist, filmmaker and bon vivant Jonas Mekas, featuring a dizzying cast of cultural icons both underground and mainstream. Memories, diary entries, conversations, and insights into his work sit alongside collages of beautifully reproduced postcards, newspaper cuttings, film negatives, lists, posters and photographs, envelopes and letters, book covers, telegrams, cartoons and doodles…
Mouvements
Mental Experience present the first ever reissue of Mouvements, originally released in 1973. An impossible to find artifact from the Swiss underground avant-garde scene of Geneva, originally released as a private boxset limited to 150 copies in 1973, only sold at art galleries. A unique, instrumental mix of free-jazz, classical, psych-rock, folk, improv, kraut, funk, and musique-concrete with tape effects. In the late 60s, musician/guitar player Christian Oestreicher, "a savage in the era …
The Mysticism of Sound & Cosmic Language
A previously unreleased series of astounding recordings, made between 1972 and 1973, by the collective Hy Maya, pull the rug from beneath the standing narratives of history. Never before released in any form, The Mysticism Of Sound & Cosmic Language is a revelation in sound. Incredibly diverse - an absolutely intoxicating, immersive journey through collective creativity which shatters the standing narratives, and foreshadows nearly every important movement of counter-cultural music which followe…
Towers of Silence
“Towers of Silence”, released on Malaysian experimental music label LaoBan, features Malaysian saxophonist Yong Yandsen and Tokyo-based Australian drummer Darren Moore. Recorded at GOK Sound studio in October 2017, “Towers of Silence” points to a distillation of Yong and Moore's individual sounds, where ghost tones and sounds of unknown origins create rarefied space. “In the days of my youth, I often saw saxophonists as obstacles since I wanted hear more and more guitar playing. For the same rea…
Arcanum 17
"Reidemeister Move's Arcanum 17 is a sound novella recorded in 2012 in remote Eastern Quebec. Reidemeister Move is Christopher Williams, a composer and contrabass player who worked with Ben Patterson (amongst an army of other mentors) and Robin Hayward, a microtonal tubist and composer who has performed music written for him by Christian Wolff and Alvin Lucier. Arcanum 17, based on the André Breton novel (1945) of the same name, was co-written by Williams and Charlie Morrow (one may recall that …
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…
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 …
Clinamina
His Hubris is saxophonist Yong Yandsen and Sudarshan Chandra Kumar on electronics. The duo is a result of their prior involvement in various other performative configurations and an effort to develop the techniques employed in their craft. Drawing from standard improv conventions, they utilize a synthesis of extended techniques and live audio signal processing to expand the nature of their practice.“Saxophonist Yong Yandsen and electronic musician Sudarshan Chandra Kumar represent the small circ…
Spirit of 76: London Punk Eyewitness
When punk first broke in the UK in 1976, music journalist John Ingham was on hand to document the very heart of the scene. Struck by the music, fashion and sheer iconoclasm of a little-known outfit called the Sex Pistols, Ingham conducted the first interview with the band, partied with its members and even bailed Sid Vicious out of jail; he also witnessed and documented the group’s evolution at legendary gigs shared with other pioneering punk bands in their earliest days, including the Damned, t…
Imaginary Concerts
Artist Peter Coffin began his work with the iconic designs of LA’s Colby Poster Printing Company in 2008. Over the years, he solicited friends to contribute their dream concerts—invented lineups for impossible gigs—and combined them with the print shop’s famously eye-popping poster backgrounds, resulting in Imaginary Concerts: a stirring, two-volume celebration of music’s vast conceptual universe. Featuring 160 concert lineups from a roster of artists, authors and daydreamers including Yoko Ono,…
Synthesis: Electronic Music 1984-1988
LP version. Dennis Young is best known as the percussionist of the New York band Liquid Liquid, which is known for their piece "Cavern" from 1983, which in turn became very well-known because Grandmaster Flash sampled it and used it as the basis for their hit "White Lines". But Young was more than just a member of the band, he produced plenty of his own music, much of it reflecting his passion for analog electronics. He was fascinated by the pioneers of the genre. In 2016 Bureau B released Wa…