Best of 2018

**Pure pleasure limited edition version in 180g vinyl - high fidelity sound, audiophile pressing** Without question, this follow-up to Quicksilver Messenger Service's self-titled debut release is the most accurate in portraying the band on vinyl in the same light as the group's critically and enthusiastically acclaimed live performances. The album is essentially centered around the extended reworkings of Bo Diddley's "Who Do You Love?" and "Mona," as well as the lesser lauded -- yet no less inte…

For a label that wasn't around long, Strata East achieved the same sort of label recognition that Impulse! or Blue Note managed to build. In other words, you knew what you were getting when you bought a record on the label, even if you didn't know the names on the outside of the cover. This is no exception. Who is Shamek Farrah? Who knows? Who cares? It's the music that's important. This is the standard spiritually intense new jazz one learns to expect from the label, soaked in some Eastern infl…

**Very last copies** Composer, musician, visual artist, and performer, Charlemagne Palestine is a legendary figure in the New York underground scene. At the piano or on his electronic oscillators, this outsider of skillful music experiments with the principles of resonance and repetition in a quest for the "golden sound": the ultimate harmonic vibration. Based in Brussels for 20 years now, his iconic work consisting of teddy bears, divinities, and other enchanting encounters is exhibited in Boza…

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…

Never before released recordings from Logos Foundation live sessions with David Toop and Paul Burwell in Brussels, on May 7, 1977. David Toop on the recordings: "When Paul Burwell and I started playing together just after Christmas, 1969, we found ourselves wrestling with a new language of sound, listening, actions, objects and space. At first it was music. We studied in the improvisation classes given by John Stevens at Ealing College in 1971-2, and also took classes in African music at London'…

Mohammad are back!! With their name compressed into MMMD deliver their most lyrical work to date on the original soundtrack for Lukas Feigelfeld's slow-burning gothic horror movie “Hagazussa – A heathen's curse”. The music is absorbing, emotional and powerful as ever and bears MMMD's familiar idiosyncratic universe galvanized in their previous releases, while open to new sonic territories that reflect the film's constant state of dread as well as key elements such as trauma, isolation, anxiety a…

Double CD version. Includes booklet. Sub Rosa present Music From Yemen Arabia: Sanaani, Laheji, Adeni And Samar a reissue of both Music From Yemen Arabia: Samar and Music From Yemen Arabia: Sanaani, Laheji, Adeni, recorded by Ragnar Johnson and Jessica Mayer. These songs originate from the city of Sanaa, the sheikdom of Lahej and the port of Aden. These songs originate from the city of Sanaa, the sheikdom of Lahej and the port of Aden. Samar is the delicious, luxury time when people gather f…

Remastered from the original tapes. Limited edition of 300 ** These three legendary LPs (in their original covers) of electronic music from Cologne were released 1982 - 1985. The Emak project, founded by Matthias Becker, was influenced by German experimental music – from Stockhausen to Can – and by minimal music, musique concrète and ambient music. Some of the tracks presented in this first complete edition of Emak’s recordings became very popular in Germany’s eighties club scene because of the…

Recorded in ’73 and rejected by tin-eared major label execs in ’75, Crystal Spears (or “Crystal Clear” as it appears on the tape box) subsumes a cathartic brawl between Minimoog and Yamaha combo organ, with percussionists providing tonal textures, and plaintive oboe colliding with roaring electronic keyboards over waves of rollicking marimba, devilishly chattering below the fray. Crystal Spears is Sun Ra’s once lost aural cinematheque! Includes a quad-ra-color Sun Ra poster!Crystal Spears, inten…

Lovely archival work with sublime slices of musique concrète courtesy of Small Cruel Party, aka Seattle composer William Ransone.  In his own words, this is “Manipulation of physical objects in acoustic space and a great deal of concentrated activity. Even in pieces involving dense sound at high volume the resultant effect is one of intense calm.”Small Cruel Party's work is focused on the inherent mysterious and beautiful quality of sound itself, with the emphasis on noninstrumental sound source…

Recordings Luciano Cilio made in 1975 and 1976, before his only album Dialoghi del presente, assembled by Girolamo De Simone from archival reel-to-reel tapes: Cilio on sitar and guitar, raga modes, a horn choir and concrete electronics.

Since their first release in 2013, the Amsterdam based imprint, Music From Memory, has rapidly emerged as force in the musical landscape, dissolving long standing conceptions of genre and history, with a startlingly catalog of reissues, compilations, and archival works. Their latest LP,  Early Tape Works (1986 - 1993) Vol. 1, by Kuniyuki Takahashi, is one of their most exciting to date - redefining what we know about its creator, while challenging the accessible presumptions about the landscape …

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…

At the dawn of the 1980’s, a few years before her now legendary LP, Through The Looking Glass, took form, a young percussionist playing with the Berlin Philharmonic, Midori Takada, found her creative ambitions looking further afield. Her ideas brought her home to Japan, then peculating with new notions of what avant-garde and experimental music could be, to form The Mkwaju Ensemble with fellow percussionist Junko Arase and Yoji Sadanari. The project quickly recorded two astounding LPs in 1981 – …

Second release in Buh's "Sounds Essentials Collection," documenting the history of Experimental Music in Peru. Miguel Flores is, alongside musicians such as Arturo Ruiz del Pozo, Luis David Aguilar or Manongo Mujica, one of the most important representatives of that period that spans from mid 70s to mid 80s, when experimenting musically in Peru united modern composing techniques of avant garde music and the search of the sounds of mother land. Miguel Flores’ Primitivo is as mind-blowing as they …

'Last',  the third LP by krautrock legends Agitation Free, was originally released in 1976 on Barclay in France as a posthumous LP that included tracks from '73 and '74. Agitation Free had been formed in 1967 by Lutz 'Lüül' Ülrich, Michael 'Fame' Günther, Lutz 'Ludwig' Kramer and Christoph Franke. They soon gained the residency as the house band on Berlin's Zodiac Club with their impressive multimedia stage show. By 1973 they had already released two LPs and suffered several line-up changes and …

Clear vinyl edition, limited repress. The French film composer François De Roubaix recorded compositions for a lot of movies. One of them is the Belgian cult horror classic Daughters of Darkness. The soundtrack to the erotic vampire - a stylish, cold, and sinister meditation on sex, compliancy, and vampirism- film consists of a lot of different musical elements and is an seductive score. It’s one of François’ finest pieces of music. The colourful compositions supports the love story and the diff…

Avant trio This Heat dissolved at a turbulent time in the UK. Margaret “The Iron Lady” Thatcher was in power, and her budget-cutting, ultra-conservative influence was felt strongly in–among many other places–the cultural melting pot of Brixton, South London, where This Heat had their origins. Dusting himself off after the collapse of the band in 1982, guitarist/vocalist Charles Bullen united with Julius Samuel to form Lifetones and embraced the sounds of the local West Indian community to…

LP version. Silk-screened sleeve. Italian sound artist Giulio Aldinucci drops his second album on KarlRecords, Disappearing In A Mirror, is again a truly masterfully composed and sound-designed ambient masterpiece and a more than worthy follow-up to the critically acclaimed Borders And Ruins, (KR 040LP, 2017), which made it onto several year's best lists for 2017. Over the course of four solo albums on labels like Dronarivm plus EPs and collaborative albums (with Ian Hawgood (HOMEN 094CD, 2018))…

Here are one of the true hidden gems to come out of the 70's German underground scene. Kollektiv produced an incomparable, unmistakeable sound with echoes of Organisation, Neu and early Kraftwerk: spacey but melodic, elevated yet rocking, innovative: progressive in the best sense, consequent in the realisation of intent, forging new musical territory without denying its roots. Electronically alienated by echo, ring modulators, octavoice, vibrators and sound filters, their music truly sounds like…

**Edition of 300. Czn presents complex interwoven forms plenty of small grooves throughout here and there, scattered throughout polyrhythmic passages. Built in density, this a trance-enducing and hypnotic masterwork.** Czn stands for Copper, Zinc and Nickel the raw path of Materials used by percussionist and sculptor Joao Pais Filipe turned into gold for this compelling drum and percussion album recorded in duet with composer and drummer Valentina Magaletti. Czn is also the alchemical sound of J…

A stunning set of 11 rare and unreleased-before cues of library gold; jazz, abstracted oddness, killer percussion tunes from the legendary Cometa library music vaults, made by names such as Sandro Brugnolini, Armando Trovaioli, Ennio Morricone, Luigi Zito, Alessandro Alessandroni, Massimo Guantini, Teimar, Berto Pisano, Giovanni Tommaso, Tito Schipa. These cues were all recorded in the late 1960s and in mid 1970s, and all have been used in the sound commentaries of newsreels, films, TV and docum…

Ambienti Coassiali is among the more obscure acts within the 1980’s scene in Italy, having only issued a lone cassette in 1988 - Vol. 1 - Room 1-6, which was released in a tiny, almost unheard edition. We've been told that Ambienti Coassiali was conceived as an ambient side project of Capricorni Pneumatici, but little information exists about either band, beyond the pseudonyms Pazuzu and Soda Caustica - drawn from Aleister Crowley's Liber A'ASH Vel Capricorni Pneumatici Sub Figura CCCLXX.  What …

Double CD edition. 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-…

Recorded from 1979 – 1980 Repeat / Metal is essentially This Heat’s third proper album, although it was released posthumously in 1993. Arguably their most radical work, Repeat / Metal features side-length tape experiments ranging from the dubby drum loops of “Repeat”, a 20 minute edit / reworking of their landmark piece “24 Track Loop”, to the gamelan-inspired sounds of “Metal”, an electro-acoustic work recorded outside of their studio, Cold Storage, and helmed by member Gareth Williams.Formed i…

In many ways, the nuanced sound worlds created in the studio by This Heat are tailor made for sedentary headphone listening. But pulling off such complicated, genre defying compositions live was surely something to witness. Until now, there was no real official document of the group’s live performances. Compiled by Charles Hayward and Charles Bullen from rough cassette tape recordings of European gigs in Tilburg, Nijmegen, Ärhus, Apeldoorn, Vienna and Rheims between April 1980 and June 198…

Formed in 1976 in Brixton, a multicultural, and – at the time – down-at-heel part of south London, This Heatwere born into a music scene in rapid flux, first thanks to the punk explosion and then via new wave and its myriad offshoots into pop, rock and art-rock. But while many sought to apply punk attitude to chart-friendly sounds, This Heat were concocting some of the most experimental ideas ever committed to tape, taking influence from musique concrète, krautrock, the burgeoning industrial sce…

Brian Eno's pioneering Ambient album from 1978 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 2 LP heavyweight vinyl, remastered at half-speed for 45 RPM, in g…

When Alan Parker recorded the killer library soul-funk LP The Voice of Soul with session vocalist Madeline Bell in 1976, some bright spark at Themes decided to also release all of the backing tracks as a separate, and equally innocuously title LP called The Sound of Soul. Thank goodness for bright sparks. Released as a collection of “unobtrusive musical backings in various rhythmic styles”, the LP’s original description dryly explains “these tracks have been issued without melody and are therefo…

A sonic documentation of the history of the film projector (movie house version), from spool to digital. For this work, Michael Lightborne relies heavily upon the natural rhythms that the machine creates. Layer upon layer of sound comes into the fray with such majesty and grace. Even within these noises Michael Lightborne occasionally lets something more come in, the way that little melodies flicker about in mere moments. By letting these pieces gain a level of prominence within the album the wh…

CD Edition. Replica reissue of one of the rarest free jazz LP ever made: Masayuki Takayanagi & Kaoru Abe's earthshattering Kaitai Teki Kōkan. Supposedly released in a limited run of 100 copies in 1970, this incredibly rare record igot finally  its first vinyl reissue via Craftman Records. The album features a recording of the duo’s live performance at the Kōsei Nenkin Kaikan concert hall in Shinjuku on June 28th, 1970. The reissue also includes a replica flyer that advertised the original event.…

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…

Emotional Rescue begins the first in a series of reissues looking at the music of guitarist Carl Weingarten and his Multiphase Records label, starting at his highly sought after collaborate album with Walter Whitney, Dreaming In Colors. With an early interest in photography and Super 8 film leading to a degree in cinema production, Weingarten’s other, self-taught, love was the slide guitar. Taking its blues roots and merging them with his visual arts background created a unique “painting in soun…

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…

Realistic Monk is the new performance project from Carl Stone in collaboration with artist and composer Miki Yui. Carl Stone is one of the pioneers of live computer music and has been composing electro-acoustic music almost exclusively since 1972. The Village Voice has famously hailed him as 'the king of sampling'. Miki Yui is an artist and composer who develops pieces of music, drawings and sound installations that start from a perception of the faintest sounds and noises and subtly reference e…

**Last copies. Limited to 100 copies only** Ned Milligan now presents his new album, Nature Always Needs Improving, building on the momentum generated by his admired third LP, Continental Burns. Echoing that album’s mode and structure, Nature Always Needs Improving offers a handful of tender, minimalist pieces before giving way to a spectral side-length conclusion. The deep intimacy of the album is enhanced by its process—primarily recorded outdoors on porches or in yards—and by the unpredictabl…

A recording of Stockhausen's Originale staged at Judson Hall, New York, in September 1964 by Charlotte Moorman, directed by Allan Kaprow, with Nam June Paik, James Tenney, Max Neuhaus, Alvin Lucier, Jackson Mac Low and Allen Ginsberg.

LP version. Mika Vainio visited the Moog Sound-Lab in April 2015. He made one his last known solo studio recordings in the form of two vinyl-sized, side-long pieces entitled Lydspor, Danish for "soundtrack". Mika worked almost exclusively with the lab's Moog Modular System 55. This UK sound-lab instrument is the sole prototype model (containing several golden filters) of Moog's sold-out reverse-engineered edition (only 55 units) recreating the 1970s classic. On completion of his sessions Mika an…

Zaradny is a composer, instrumentalist and visual artist; Piotrowicz a composer, author of sound installations and virtuoso of analog synthesizers. They founded and curated the Musica Genera festival and label. Noetinger, an improviser, publisher and instrumentalist, specializes in electroacoustic collages full of permutations on his tape recorder and using all sorts of electronics. What connects these musicians are their methods of work: experiment as the basis of action, controlled accidents, …

**300 copies on black vinyl** A one-hour performance presented in 1990 at the 8th Biennale of Sydney (The Readymade Boomerang: Certain Relations in 20th Century Art) where time is being scanned and animated by matter and where the genius of Henning Christiansen - with fellow artist Bjørn Nørgaard and Ken Unsworth, to whom this performance is dedicated - establish a deep dialogue with the nature (of sound) watching the time, stone on stone, being at the same time actors and audience of its epheme…