Best of 2018

**One-off edition of 200 copies. Heavyweight 7" EP**  Unreleased before music from the cult 1973 horror film 'Messiah of Evil'. One of the earliest fully electronic feature-film scores, Phillan Bishop's Moog-y mood music for Messiah of Evil is an avant garde suite of modulated shrieks, drones and pulses which whirl a discordant vortex around the bizarre on-screen images. With only three early-70's budget horror movies to his credit, this represents the first release of music by the mysterious Ph…

Few copies back in stock, sold-out at source **First-time vinyl reissue. Limited edition of 500 numbered copies on clear vinyl, one time pressing.** New Zealand-born sound artist and composer Annea Lockwood received formal training at various institutions before exploring the sonorous potential of glass in a series of performances in the late 1960s. With plates of wired glass, glass discs, chunks of green cullet glass, glass tubing, sheets of micro-glass, glass jars and other incarnations of the…

Edition of 300. One night, a few years ago, Danish saxophonist Mette Rasmussen blew so extremely hard on her instrument that Dennis Tyfus –– in bed in Belgium, fending off animals in his sleep – woke up with permanent ear and brain damage.Sometime later, Rasmussen travelled to Belgium to record with the afflicted Tyfus. The result is a fruit cake, kneaded with the bloodied hands of a butcher. It sounds like a room but it's pitted with chewy rubber, spat onto a cassette recorder that is playing a…

Edition of 300. The only thing Australia, Canada and Sweden have in common is taking in an abstract position in a vague situation! In July 2016, a strong arctic wind blew open the windows that separate the mean streets of Stockholm from the city's legendary EMS Studios. Oren Ambarchi, Crys Cole and Leif Elggren were the only folks present in the studio at that point; not much could be done besides making the best out of a bad situation. Ambarchi burned the studio carpet to stay warm; Cole made a…

Cross-continental tape exorcisms. Combining Anthony Pateras’ exploratory piano techniques with Stephen O’Malley’s harmonic ecstasies, this duo performed a one-off show at Instants Chavirés in 2011. Remixed and re-constructed here primarily using 1/4 inch tape machine, Rêve Noir presents a compelling landscape of fractured musique concrète, introspective meditations, buzzing electro-acoustic textures and straight up walls of monolithic guitar.A 20 page booklet interview with O’Malley is includ…

LP version. 140 gram vinyl. Thomas Ankersmit's new album for Shelter Press Homage To Dick Raaijmakers is an all-analog electronic music composition inspired by legendary Dutch composer/electronic and tape music pioneer and multimedia artist, Dick Raaijmakers (1930-2013). The work takes inspiration from Raaijmakers's music from the 1960s, his texts on sound composition like "Cahier M", and notes on his own music. On this recording, Ankersmit plays Serge Modular feedback and sine/pulse/random gene…

Australia’s greatest cult band, The Necks, has a new piece to offer the world this summer, entitled “Body”. Different again to all previous Necks albums (20 in total), the band has chosen 10 words and phrases that summarize the four richly contrasting episodes of this hour-long, mesmerizing groove. They are as follows: Episodic, Driving, Dynamic, Layered, Celebratory, Soaring, Rocking out, Buoyant, Sustained, Perfectly paced. The album uses, yet again, the combination of Chris Abrahams (piano, k…

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…

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 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…

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…

**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…

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…

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…

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.

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 …

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 …

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…

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…

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…

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…

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 …

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 …

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…

**few copies back in stock, very last around** It hardly needs to be said that the context of experimental music is defined by incredibly ambitious efforts. But there’s ambitious, and then there’s ambitious. The German composer and musician, Stephan Mathieu, might have taken the cake. Back in 2016, he began issuing his sprawling Radiance project, the culmination of a decade of work, in the end amounting to twelve thematically linked album length pieces, built around the concepts of stasis, unfol…

**Edition of 300 copies, a masterwork made with solar oscillator (!) we are in awe** Boundless solar oscillations in exquisite cycle; this new record from Miki Yui is as playful as it is mesmerizing. Cuspeditions warmly welcomes Japanese artist Miki Yui to the label, with a work delicately crafted from field recordings, synthesizer, solar oscillator and sampler. Yui is known for the unique nature of her music (apparent also in past collaborations with Rolf Julius, Rie Nakajima and Klaus Dinger),…

Issued privately in 1972 by Toronto's Carmen Lamanna Gallery following an Autumn 1970 exhibition, this "Sound Work" by Sculptor Robin MacKenzie is a wonder of simplicity. Presenting a series of unadorned Sound Events - the approaches & recessions of single vehicles on what sounds like a lonely stretch of the 403 at 3am, then the Composer's footsteps similarly walking toward & away from the microphone's singular vantage point - in a manner befitting both the storied "Sounds of the Junkyard" Folk…

ncredible, unheralded set of music by Νικηφόρος Ρώτας (Nikiforos Rotas), incorporating Electronic & Experimental modes into mid-70s Éntekhno & Sound-Poetry forms.The first record, "Τραγούδια Καβάφη" (Kavafis Songs) sets works by early 20th Century Alexandrian poet Constantine P. Cavafy to music. Much in the vein of "Works of Electronic Music" contributor Thanos Mikroutsikos' experiments formulating a more Avant-Garde strain of Éntekhno from the mid-70s onwards, Rotas' use of non-musical sounds, …

Nicolae Brînduș was born in Bucharest in 1935 and swiftly matriculated through his studies in Piano & Composition at the National University of Music before embarking on the life-changing seminars at the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik, Darmstadt throughout the late 60s & early 70s; even working at Ircam for a spell in the mid-1980s. How this formative music, composed & recorded largely during his Darmstadt phase, has remained so relatively unknown is insane to me; it has all of…

Incredible new solo LP for the 'customized analog oscillator' virtuoso David Ross. Unpredictable micro-rhythms awkwardly roaming across an electronic wasteland. In ‘A Conceptual Framework for Consciousness’, Dr. Joachim Keppler elaborates on Quantum Stochastic Electrodynamic (SED) theoryto suggest that consciousness is a fundamental property of the universe rather than a material creation of the human brain.Functioning as a resonant stochastic oscillator, the brain modulates with an all-pervasiv…

**In Stock** Through a remarkable and singular body of work, over the course of the last decade, like storm beginning as whisper on the horizon, the composer and percussionist Sarah Hennies has slowly emerged as one of the definitive voices of her generation. Initially coming to focus as a member of Austin’s experimental music scene during the early 2000’s, before relocating to upstate New York, with a delicate, clattering grace, she has continuously offered vision, conceptual armature, crucial …

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…

A site-specific recording sporting a straightforward approach that i’ve grown to love in the works of Gonçalo Cardoso. An album of modern day exotica, a genre i usually pretty much dislike, yet Cardoso steers his vehicle easily aside the trapdoors and potholes. Combining found sounds, sparse playing and field recordings he creates a world that both invokes Treasure Island, and An Essay On Exoticism. Indeed questions are raised. But especially certain emotions are shared. Cardoso acts both like t…

Klaus Schulze is a German electronic music pioneer, composer and musician that needs very little introduction. In the late sixties & early seventies he was a member of several iconic bands such as Tangerine Dream, The Cosmic Jokers and Ash Ra Tempel before launching a solo career consisting of more than 60 albums released across five decades. Collaborations were numerous and highlights include working with Steve Winwood, Brian Eno and Alphaville… just to name a few.Klaus Schulze’s proto moog-syn…

Now available for the first time on vinyl, One Way Static Records presents the second volume in our new archival series La Vie Electronique. This volume (1.1) focuses on the years 1970-1972 and is spread over two glorious LP’s containing +78 minutes of Klaus Shulze rarities. This deluxe vinyl set also comes with an insert containing extensive liner notes. Klaus Schulze is a German electronic music pioneer, composer and musician that needs very little introduction. In the late sixties & early sev…

The most enigmatic and rare of Danish artist and composer Henning Christiansen’s albums Satie i høj sø is now re-issued by Institute for Danish Sound Archeology and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Roskilde, Denmark. The album collects five central works from Christiansen’s neo-romantic period in the 1970s. This completely overlooked and virtually unheard period in Henning Christiansen’s oevre contains perhaps his most fascinating and beautiful works.For 10 years from 1969-79 Christiansen turne…

Fantôme Phonographique present a reissue of The Electrosoniks's Electronic Music, an LP by Tom Dissevelt and Dick Raaymakers's (aka Kid Baltan) originally released in 1962. Tom Dissevelt and Dick Raaymakers were both Dutch composers and electronic music pioneers. Both musicians began their studies at Royal Conservatory of The Hague on trombone and piano respectively, and later discovered the music of Karlheinz Stockhausen and Anton Webern. In the mid-50s Raaymakers began working at the Philips N…

So Sweet! Edition of 400, with a full-colour sleeve and insert. It’s taken 14 years for these extravagant Icelandic artist troubadours to follow up their last (untitled) album. (At least they managed to give this one a name ; imagine what else they’d be capable of if we’ d waited another five years. ) Beach Jolanda transposes their classic calipso - beach - bar - laptop - organ g ibberish to the unmanned terrain of public lavatories in the dead of night. But i t wouldn’t be a party without guest…

CD edition. Buchla synth supremo Todd Barton’s hyperstitious soundtrack to Always Coming Home, an ‘80s American sci-fi novel by author Ursula K. Le Guin, is yet another ingenious recording dug out for reappraisal by Pete Swanson and Jed Middleman’s Freedom to Spend label - a division of RVNG Intl. Expect alien folk songs in made-up language, set to richly evocative backdrops of location recordings subtly gilded with self built instruments and synth contours. Properly immersive, otherworldly - th…

Double LP version. Unreleased archival recordings as performed by dhrupad master Zia Mohiuddin Dagar. Around ten years ago, deep into a cozy and hazy night following a concert with my sound brothers Daniel O'Sullivan and Kristoffer Rygg in London (as Æthenor), they graciously introduced me to a recording of rudra veena (a kind of noble deeper bass relative to the sitar, in a way) as performed by dhrupad master Zia Mohiuddin Dagar. Dhrupad, for those who do not know, is a branch of Hindustani cla…