Best of 2019
Oramics
Deluxe clear 4LP edition, 155 minutes / 8 sides of vinyl mastered and cut at D&M and housed in a heavyweight, beautiful 300gm gatefold sleeve featuring rare archival photographs. This hugely influential, definitive collection from electronic music pioneer and founder of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, Daphne Oram, has been out of print on vinyl since 2013 and is now thankfully available again via Modern Love sidelabel, Young Americans. Throughout her life, Oram was a wildly original musician, inve…
Three For Shepp
In 1966, when Marion Brown was ready to make his first record as a leader, he was standing on the shoulders of giants. Formative associations with Ornette Coleman and Sun Ra established Brown as a saxophonist to watch, and he had already appeared on free jazz landmarks Archie Shepp's Fire Music and John Coltrane's Ascension. Originally released on Impulse!, Brown's debut lays down three startling originals and three tunes by Shepp – echoing his mentor's 1964 homage to Coltrane, Four For Trane. …
Prisma Sonoro
** First LP reissue of this highly collectable Italian Library session. Remastered from the original master tapes. Replica of the original tip-on sleeve. ** Undoubtedly one of the central figures of 1960s/70s Italian film music, Alessandro Alessandroni defined the very essence of the genre with his vocal group, I Cantori Moderni. Renowned for his pioneering reverb guitar sound, sitar exploration and a phenomenal whistling technique, (Perhaps best known for his contribution in shaping the famous …
Reservoir 1
Black Truffle present Reservoir 1: Preservation, a gorgeous piece by American composer/percussionist Sarah Hennies. Sarah's work explores a variety of musical, sociopolitical, and psychological issues including queer and trans identity, love, intimacy, psychoacoustics, and percussion. The Reservoirs are a series of three one-hour pieces based on the relationship between the conscious and unconscious human mind. Jung and Freud described the unconscious mind as a reservoir, a repository for memori…
1983-1988
**A true rare pearl of the Italian electronic scene, don't miss this one** Turin, late 1980s. The factory fumes of Italy’s militant industrial city are slowly giving way to a strange disenchantment. Marco Milanesio and Roberta Ongaro, who first as Novostj and then as DsorDNE were central to the city’s underground throughout the decade, take stock of the Zeitgeist in a collection tracing the arc of their early work. Released on HAX in a handful of handmade copies in 1988, the tape described itsel…
Kshatrya (The Eye of the Bird)
CD version. Transversales Disques presents Kshatrya (The Eye Of The Bird), a never released before recording by French avant-garde electronic composer Igor Wakhevitch. Wakhevitch composed a bunch of major experimental albums in the '70s, such as Logos (1970), Docteur Faust (1971), Hathor (1972), Les Fous D'or (1975), Nagual (1977), and Let's Start (1979). During this 10-year period, Wakhevitch was close to Jean-Michel Jarre, Pink Floyd, Soft Machine, and legendary choreographer Maurice Bejart ha…
Siberia / Sirens
Two incredible sonic artworks by Susanne Skog’s work within sound art and composition has its roots in narrative art forms, experimental radio, radio drama and documentaries. Her artwork evolves from her own recordings from around the world, sonic material which she turns into new shapes and expressions, frictions and correlations, often considering movements and spatialisation as a vital element. Siberia is based on recordings from a 205 hour / 9288 kilometer trip by train from Moscow to Vladiv…
Threads
** Killer. Released in 1977 on Horo Records, first time available again after 40 years** New York-born alto saxophonist Steve Lacy became associated with the avant-garde jazz movement from the mid-1950s, playing on free jazz pianist Cecil Taylor’s influential debut LP and early work by the Canadian pianist Gil Evans, before serving a long tenure with the idiosyncratic improv pianist Theolonius Monk, whose work he would continue to reference throughout his career. Visiting Europe from the md-1960…
The Island Man
Alberto Savinio - The Island Man presents the proceedings of the homage organized by NoMus at Milan’s Museo del Novecento from January 17 to May 15, 2017. The event (consisting of an exhibition, seminars, concerts, listening and film sessions) was dedicated to Alberto Savinio (brother of the famous painter Giorgio de Chirico), one of the most original and versatile talents of the Twentieth Century: writer, artist, playwriter, musician, set designer, yet also author of radioplays, sketches for th…
Minecxio Emanations 1993-2018
Pica Disk is extremely proud to present “Minecxio Emanations 1993-2018” – a box-set dedicated to the cult Argentinian band Reynols that features 52 audio tracks (mostly previously unreleased), 90 minutes of video and extensive liner notes and visuals.Reynols started in 1993 in Buenos Aires and is famous amongst many things for its unique Down’s syndrome drummer/vocalist Miguel Tomasín, who is the band’s spiritual architect. Reynols is also known its musical diversity, which spans everything from…
Sulla Pelle
Killer one. Valentina Magaletti and Julian Sartorius maintain a dialogue of irregular tempos and off-kilter percussion on their first collaborative record titled Sulla Pelle. Valentina is a force in the world of electronic and experimental music - working with Tom Relleen under Tomaga, jazz/pop band Vanishing Twin, the collective UUUU with a couple of releases on Editions Mego, as well as various collaborations with the likes of Nicolas Jaar and Raime / Moin to name a couple.Julian Sartorius is …
Cushion
**Screen printed edition of 300 hand-numbered copies. High-quality open screen printed sleeve, and heavy outer screen printed PVC sleeve. Comes with a bonus CD** For their third album Jukwaa expands to a quintet : 1 piano, 2 double-basses, 2 drums. This exceptional instrumentation led to an exploration and investigation of the instruments themselves, their roles and their timbral range. «Jukwaa embodies a central paradox of today’s modern music: the double bass is a bass and not a bass, the drum…
King of Noise
**500 copies only, remastered & the first vinyl reissue EVER of this legendary Japanoise LP. Pressed on 180 gram vinyl. Wow!** On King of Noise Hijokaidan is pared down to the duo of Jojo Hiroshige (on electric guitar) and Toshiji Mikawa (on drums, electronics, and voice.) In it’s early years, Hijokaidan saw as many as 19 members, but whether it be 19 or just two, Hijokaidan creates the same sheer wall of noise that gives them their apt title, King of Noise! On the opening track The Wreck of a O…
Signals Bulletin
Faitiche releases a new collaboration between the Japanese sound artist Asuna and Jan Jelinek: the album Signals Bulletin brings together joint improvisations and compositions made over a period of three years in Berlin, Kyoto and Kanazawa. Asuna’s meandering organ drones merge with Jelinek’s pulsating synthesizer and field recording loops to create dense superclusters that span broad harmonic arcs."Watching the Japanese sound artist Asuna playing the organ, some people might be surprised. Asuna…
Vampir-Cuadecuc
**130 copies. Art Edition** Carles Santos was a multi-disciplinary artist, perhaps best known outside of Spain as a composer of scores for his lifelong collaborator, radical Catalan filmmaker Pere Portabella. Made in 1970 during the final years of Franco’s dictatorship, Vampir-Cuadecuc is an astonishingly creative assault on the regime and, arguably, Portabella’s most influential work. Filmed behind the scenes during the production of Jesús Franco’s Count Dracula (1970), Vampir-Cuadecuc is a hig…
Inside
The saxophone is most often associated with jazz, a lead instrument that’s strong on melody and a potent vehicle for improvisation. Urban Sax puts all those ideas to bed. For those unfamiliar, Urban Sax is the creative outlet of composer Gilbert Artman, who started the group back in the mid-70s, and composes and arranges all of the group’s material. The “group” in this case is over 75 performers, consisting mostly of saxophones (the entire family from sopranino to bass), but also including clari…
Scenes From the South Island
Expanded reissue of New Zealand guitar pioneer Roy Montgomery's rare and revered full-length debut, Scenes From The South Island, originally released in 1995 by West Coast experimental / space rock label Drunken Fish. Recorded on both coasts on a pair of Tascam 4-tracks, the album is alternately wistful, windswept, skeletal, shredded, and strange. Solo guitar figures flow and fray through echo and empty space, evoking loss, long roads, and low-lit landscapes.Montgomery's own memories of this era…
Geelriandre / Arthesis
**Edition of 1000 copies**Eliane Radigue's Geelriandre / Arthesis is named for the pieces that fill its two sides. Geelriandre, realized on an ARP 2500 synthesizer in 1972, features Gérard Fremy on prepared piano. Arthesis, realized using the University of Iowa's Moog in 1973, comprises the full duration of side B. Eliane Radigue has received much deserved praise for her transcendent composiitions for tape, synthesizers, and acoustic instruments. Her work is deep, slowly changing, and timelessly…
Death And Spring
We live in a musical era defined by historical reappraisal - a noble moment which has rescued a near countless number of incredible albums from lingering neglect and loss. As wonderful and exciting as this is, it has come with an unexpected, but increasingly acknowledged consequence. With so many eyes on what was, we risk allowing history to repeat, subjecting today’s artists to the same forms neglect which plagued the past. It’s becoming increasingly rare to encounter record labels which entire…
Plains
**Limited to 100 copies only**Two Plains & A Fancy, the third film by Lev Kalman and Whitney Horn, was hailed by The New Yorker as “the most imaginative and visionary” Western of recent years and is now receiving a theatrical release. Central to the film’s atmosphere is its arid yet spacious score, a collaboration between Talya Cooper (previously of Household) and John Atkinson (of Aa), whose soundtrack for Asasin in Lege was the inaugural Florabelle release. As an LP, Plains grows out of elemen…