Best of 2018

"Substunce Sans Scrupule" is a dream. A hazy dream born in the emptiness between the words of "Igitur ou La folie d'Elbehnon" by Stéphane Mallarmé. A dream that sought Marcel Proust's lost time and constituted the light and the black void between the single frame of Gregory Markopoulos. It is the birth and the destruction of the work of art, primitivism and science."Substunce Sans Scrupule" is as much Georgios Karamanolaki's automatic writing on the work of Jean-Marc Foussat as Jean-Marc Foussat…

**Special edition of 50 in a tote bag including the 3 LPs, the book "Long Strings 1982–2011" (originally published by Het Apollohuis), and 6 postcards. Few copies available** After two LPs in 2014 and 2017, Edition Telemark now turns to the group of works that is probably the most well-known within the vast oeuvre of Dutch sound and visual artist Paul Panhuysen (1934-2015), his long string installations. Using this term, he referred to all of his works involving strings and sounds. They were rea…

A cosmic, phased-out percussion adventure by Shimshon Miel, a lone-wolf hippie from Tel-Aviv who experimented with hallucinogenic psych-folk, and self-released his only album in 1977. Fortuna Records reissues two of the album's killer cuts for the very first time, alongside a late-night club edit by Kalbata. Expect extra trippy percussion soundscapes layered on top of a thumping bass guitar in wild 70's style stereo action. Kalbata's remix is a straight up voodoo ritual, adding much needed 808 s…

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…

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,…

**Edition of 500 numbered copies. Housed in hand-printed, laser-cut and sewed 1mm thick cardboard covers. All produced and assembled by hand in a pure DIY spirit.Shipping this week** Separated from both its reputation and its sleeve art, the music of Muslimgauze explores the relationship of visual sensations -- space, color, depth, illusion -- to the listening experience. The music on Maroon is dub-like inspired techno music, laidback with voices appearing randomly in the mix. The thick drums an…

Double CD Edition. Jazzman Record's latest examination of esoteric, modal, and progressive jazz of the 20th century has taken them to Japan. The liberating force of jazz has been created and felt all around the world, but few nations on earth embraced the jazz message with the passion and intensity of Japan. From the dawn of the jazz age to the present day, Japanese audiences have been renowned tastemakers, enthusiasts, and champions of the music -- in the 1980s, Japan was the biggest per …

For a while it was possible to describe the duo Coppice’s often indescribable music simply by identifying their many instruments, particularly the harmonium and accordion wielded by Joseph Kramer and Noé Cuéllar. But the notion of renewal is built right into their name: the word “coppice” refers to the practice of pruning a tree to promote new growth. The label press release says everything "Outside: light-filters-to-be-entered are Surreal Air Fortress. New  songs from Coppice for physical model…

Reissue label Emotional Rescue have dusted off a real classic here: Clive and Mark Ives’ 1982 debut, the only release on the brothers’ Sunshine Series imprint. As Woo, they blended rock, jazz, synths and ambience into thirteen spine-tingling trips: everything from deep Theremins and wailing strings on ‘C.H. Revisited’ to braying flamenco guitars on ‘Wapping’."Absolute unsung genius from the Ives brothers, who comprise Woo. On this debut LP of theirs, attenuated assemblages of finespun acoustic g…

1000 pictures and documents from the work and life of Charlemagne Palestine explode from the pages of the book, superimposed in ‘strumming’ layers, weaving the historical & present, works & performance, private & public into a tightly knit sschmmettrroobookk. Texts by Michel Baudson and Xavier Garcia Bardón.In 1974, the Belgian cartoonist Hergé, a great admirer of American avant-garde art, and Karel Geirlandt, the new director of the Centre for Fine Arts, invited Charlemagne Palestine to perform…

CD 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 classical …

Face Time is the second release from the trio of Oren Ambarchi, Kassel Jaeger, and James Rushford, following on from their 2016 debut Pale Calling (BT 020LP). Recorded at the GRM studios in Paris in June 2017, the record immediately returns to the idiosyncratic sound-world of the trio's first release, a simmering stew of electronic smears, pitched-down animal moans, and mysteriously emotive microtonal organ chords. But before long the record takes an unexpected turn, as sounds that initially ent…

** Special edition 120 page large format Book/LP/CD/Insert – deluxe Hardcover with silver foil impression, custom inner sleeve, insert. Edition of 100 hand-numbered copies ** presents the proceedings of the homage organized at Milan’s Museo del Novecento from June 21, 2016 to January 14, 2017. This exposition (consisting of an exhibition, seminars, concerts, and listening and film sessions) was dedicated to the sound engineer Marino Zuccheri, the main collaborator of Milan’s famous electronic mu…

First in a series of two releases unveiling the previously unissued soundtracks made for the films of Ursula Reuter Christiansen by her partner and collaborator Henning Christiansen. The Executioner ("Skarpretteren") is Ursula's first film from 1971 and is now considered one of the most important works of early Danish feminist art. A highly praised recent show at the Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen highlighted the pertinent themes and ongoing urgency which lies within this bold symbolic w…

Second in a series of two previously unreleased soundtracks Henning Christiansen made for the films made by his partner and collaborator Ursula Reuter Christiansen. Den Røde Skov ("The Red Forest") was Ursula's second film made in 1986. In stark contrast to the exquisite romantic melancolia of their first collaboration, The Executioner (PP 034LP), Den Røde Skov resides as one of the wildest recordings in the entire Christiansen catalog. Aligned more with works like the legendary collaboration wi…

Exact LP repro edition. A few months after the foundation of Can, Holger Czukay recorded his first solo album ‘Canaxis’, in conjunction with producer/engineer Rolf Dammers, this album was assembled from thousands of snippets recorded from short wave radio, a long standing obsession of Czukay's which he also incorporated into some of Can's later albums. A refugee during the Second World War, Holger Czukay famously studied with Karlheinz Stockhausen in the early ‘60s. That direct exposure to the c…

Okkyung Lee is a cellist, composer, and improviser who moves freely between of artistic disciples and contingencies. Since moving to New York in 2000 she has worked in disparate contexts as a solo artist and collaborator with creators in a wide range of disciplines. A native of South Korea, Lee has taken a broad array of inspirations—including noise, improvisation, jazz, western classical, and the traditional and popular music of her homeland—and used them to forge a highly distinctive app…

Fantôme Phonographique present a reissue of Pur En Finir Avec Le Jugement De Dieu by Antonin Artaud. Antonin Artaud was a French poet, dramatist, and director and one of the most important figures in 20th century European theater, and especially the avant-garde. His piece "Pour En Finir Avec Le Jugement De Dieu" was recorded in 1947 to be aired on French radio. But the project was shelved not only for its scatological, anti-American, anti-religious content, but also for its avant-garde sound, wi…

CD edition. The duo Anne-James Chaton and Andy Moor has produced original works where poetry and guitar combine in explorations of thematic axes. With the project ‘Heretics’, of which Tout Ce Que Je Sais (All I know) is the second part, they revive the most obscure, violent, erotic passions, summoning the great figures of their personal mythologies. In the company of Caravaggio, Marquis de Sade, William Burroughs and figures such as Jose Mujica, the duo immerses the listener in another wor…

Christian Zanési on Grand Bruit (1991): "The great mobile sound bodies have an ordinary yet amazing ability to place the listener-traveler within, as if he or she was inside a giant double bass, in this case a train stroked by a double bow: the rails and the air. In 1991, I explored this phenomenon during my daily commute from the studio to my home. I used only a 21 minutes recording and treated it as a single sound object. I then processed and enhanced it as a photographer would have don…

Astonishing collage / tape music by ’80s Dutch collective featuring members of de Fabriek and Mekanik Kommando, among others. Imagine floating like a whale in the waters of the nordic hemisphere looking through the layers of water and ice to the sun the moon and the stars, and you might get closer to this LSD-infused release... Narwal was (is?) a band from the Netherlands, most active during the 80's. It consists of four members that were also active in two industrial groups (de Fabriek & Meka…

Hand-numbered LP. Edition of 400 copies. Re-dition of this John Duncan 1984 le Riot album: re-recorded, re-mixed at EMS and expanded with material that didn’t make the initial pressings, all taken from original 8-track master tape - which required them to revive obsolete machinery - and all re-mastered by Rashad Becker for this release; which, according to the legendary avant-garde agitator himself, is finally packaged in artwork befitting of his vision. Or take it straight from the horse’s gob:…

Death Waltz Recording Company is proud to present the soundtrack to 1972's Giallo My Dear Killer with music by Maestro Ennio Morricone.  My Dear Killer (Mio Caro Assassino) was a 1972 Giallo directed by Tonino Valerii (The Assistant director on A Fist full of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More), it is easily one of the greatest of all Giallo films to come out of Italy and you owe it to yourself to track it down and watch it. The score form Maestro Ennio Morricone is absolutely outstanding and no…

Xylo-Mania is a concise collection of beautiful computer experiments. Using PRAAT, a software to analyse and manipulate speech on a signal basis, Francesco Cavaliere brings to life yet another part of his grand world. A world reading like a Landolfi or Gogol story; where the fantastic, the imagination and the creative meet. Here’s an artist inhabiting the Italian heritage - magic realism, flamboyant thinking, and self confident harmonization - soaking up references and dissolving it into …

Incredible edition consisting of  2LP set in hardboard gatefold with black linen and embossed print, with large format booklet with extensive notes (in English), scores, illustrations and graphics, in a edition of 300 copies.‘MARS II, the vinyl’ contains the music composed for MARS II, the performance. In MARS II Karl Van Welden explores the impact of volcanic ash on the performance of pianist Frederik Croene and the sound he produces, playing on an automated piano. MARS II examines a momen…

Tint is the first new solo recording from Joe Talia in over a decade. Australian-born but now based in Tokyo, Talia is known to many listeners as a drummer (frequently collaborating both live and in the studio with artists such as Oren Ambarchi and Jim O'Rourke) and as a recording and mixing engineer responsible for dozens of releases across the fields of contemporary experimental music, wayward pop, and jazz. Alongside James Rushford, he is also responsible for one of the most legendary r…

Crying Bamboos is a translation of the pidgin description of the sound of sacred flutes: "Mambu i cry, i cry, i cry". Sacred flutes are blown to make the cries of spirits by adult men in the Madang region of Papua New Guinea. Pairs of long bamboo male and female flutes are played for ceremonies in the coastal villages near the Ramu River. There are seven male initiation flute cries from Bosmun, four flute cries from Bak: Borai with occasional single garamut percussion and two flute cries from Ka…

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 Wave (BB 219CD…

**Very Last Copies - Original 1983 copies of this obscure classic, slightly warped** few copies available. Over the last decade we’ve begun to form an image of Italy’s long neglected musical avant-garde. This movement, with artifacts stretching from the mid-1960’s to today, remained landlocked for decades, almost entirely unheard beyond the country of its birth. With a small number of exceptions, despite the remarkable creative diversity reissue culture has managed to represent, the majorit…

Misztériumok is the third full-length record - their first on three:four - of Italian duo Amuleto, composed of Francesco Dillon and his cousin and three:four’s artist Riccardo Wanke. Following the route of previous releases this new album emerges as the fusion of composed and improvised forms and moves between contemporary and electronic music mixing acoustic, electronic and real world sounds. The music takes shapes from a progressive disclosure of sonic material that gradually manifests i…

**Edition of 250 copies with silkscreened booklet** Braublff  (Materie und Laut) is an archival piece with work from Gerhard Rühm, Alessandro Bosetti, Tomomi Adachi, ArfArf. With specific contributions and live recordings. Braublff  is a series of live events organised by DE PLAYER (Rotterdam) and KRAAK (Ghent) and brings together contemporary vocal poets, text-sound composers and language-based artists with the pioneering work of the avant-garde. It deals with the question: “Where and how…

Sublime immersive session for computer generated sound, guitar and electronics from Yuen Chee Wai and Lasse Marhaug. In collaboration, they find a deeply immersive equilibrium where their tempered, haptic gestures give rise to a play of shimmering tones in negative space recalling the soundtrack to some black light theatre piece or Far Eastern classical.Yuen Chee Wai is a musician, artist, designer and curator based in Singapore. Often inspired by ideas drawn from philosophical and literary te…

Editions Mego’s 250th release continues its ongoing legacy of cross-pollinating and perverting various threads of radical 20th Century music whilst concocting and properling further ideas into the nebulous region where we currently reside. With Ex Nihilo, Editions Mego resumes it’s enduring relationship with long term collaborator and stalwart representative of the labels aesthetic with a new release from London’s most charming deviant occupant, Mr Bruce Gilbert (formerly of Wire, Dome etc…

**Second edition, limited again to 99 copies, be quick** Along with Merzbow and Hijokaidan, Masonna is one of the best (known) Japanese noise projects. A psychedelic touch, cascades of electronic noise and vocal belching mixed together constitute the ingredients of Mademoiselle Anne Sanglante Ou Notre Nymphomanie Auréolé, the double-barrelled named for Masonna. Yamazaki “Maso” Takushi created Masonna in 1987. He started recordings on cassette tapes for his own label: Coquette. His plentiful prod…

CD edition. 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…

Lullabies For Insomniacs presents ‘For Leena’, a collection of unreleased pieces composed between 1991 & 1998 by Dino J.A. Deane for the choreography of dance works by Colleen Mulvihill.Dino J. A. Deane began his professional career, at the age of nineteen, as a musical arranger and multi-instrumentalist (trombone, flutes, keyboards, percussion). He worked in funk bands around Los Angeles before moving to San Francisco in the mid 1970’s, where as an improvising artist he became involved in the d…

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…

Four Flies Records keep on researching Alessandro Alessandroni’s limitless archive, compiling this time an LP of tracks composed between 1972-1978, All the tracks were previously unreleased and are presented here for the first time - a truly ‘Lost & Found’ treasure that sees the light for the first time!After the incredible success of Afro Discoteca (Four Flies Records, 2017), Pierpaolo De Sanctis compiles a 15-tracks LP of forgotten soundtracks and library music treasures from the Italian Maest…

The fourth LP in Recital's Loren Connors editions/reissue series. Pretty As Ever is a beautiful collection of Loren's guitar ballads, dedicated to his wife Suzanne. It includes the "Pretty As Ever" and "Trinity" suites, from the out-of-print album Sails (2005), alongside the complete Little Match Girl (2000). This album falls in line with the other LPs Recital has published, Airs (2015), Lullaby (2016), Evangeline (2017)... as hopeful and careful as a heartbeat. This LP includes "Woman of Sorro…