Reissues
Wganda Kenya Kammpala Grupo
*First time reissue!* A wild and funky collection of Afro grooves that was ahead of its time in 1977 and has become a collector’s item in recent years, especially due to the growing international interest in Colombian picó sound system culture. Fruko and his studio bands Wganda Kenya and Kammpala Grupo treat us to a diverse set of African and Caribbean styles, laced with crazy synths, psychedelic guitar and infectious pan-African polyrhythms.
Algo Salvaje Vol. 4
After three previous volumes in our series “Algo Salvaje” devoted to the Spanish nuggets, the new instalment explores the darkest, neglected and rebellious side of Peruvian 60s garage beat.
“Algo salvaje” is an anthology devoted to a rich period when hundreds of bands appeared all over the world and, after paying attention to what their US and British contemporaries were doing, found their own way to vent their teenage rebellion through loud guitars. With amazing results!
Many of the 14 tracks a…
Reprint
"Reprint was originally released on cassette by Snatch Tapes in 1980 and was credited to an unknown duo called Claire Thomas & Susan Vezey. Claire and Susan were infact a figment of Snatch Tapes founder Philip Sanderson's imagination. In addition to running the label, Philip was one half of the DIY electronic group Storm Bugs, and regularly collaborator with a then unknown musician by the name of David Jackman (one of these tracks they did together was recent issued on a 10" by Die Stadt). Repri…
Cybersonic Arts Adventures in American New Music (Book)
Composer, performer, instrument builder, teacher, and writer Gordon Mumma has left an indelible mark on the American contemporary music scene. A prolific composer and innovative French horn player, Mumma is recognized for integrating advanced electronic processes into musical structures, an approach he has termed "Cybersonics." Musicologist Michelle Fillion curates a collection of Mumma's writings, presenting revised versions of his classic pieces as well as many unpublished works from every st…
Timeline
2023 marks the twenty-eighth year of Suarasama; it is also the first year for this reissue of their 2013 masterpiece, Timeline. Irwansyah Harahap and Rithaony Hutajulu, Ethnomusicology lecturers at University of Sumatera Utara, founded Suarasama in 1995 after graduating from the University of Washington Ethnomusicology program. Their music, as expressed on both Timeline and Fajar Di Atas Awan (first issued in 1998, reissued by Drag City in 2008) is hypnotic and joyful; progressing ancient North …
Beziehungen
Super Tip! LP version. Re-release of the second album by Annexus Quam, originally released in 1972. Transferred from the original master tapes and carefully remastered by HaGü Schmitz and Dieter Wegner. The timing was right: Five years earlier would have been too early, five years later would have been too late. But Annexus Quam from Kamp-Lintfort near Düsseldorf came along with the right music at the right moment. The seven-piece band formed in 1967 as Ambition Of Music; they were what was then…
One Arm Bandits
"One Arm Bandits is an hour-long piece in four parts, scored for four cellists. The cellists play only open strings, thus using only their right arms, never fingering the strings with the left hand. Recorded in Alvin Lucier's dining room, this work features cellists Tyler J. Borden, Laura Cetilia, Charles Curtis and Judith Hamann. Lucier oversaw and produced the recording, and approved the final takes. One Arm Bandits was an important project for Alvin Lucier. The idea for the piece goes back to…
Solo For Tamburium
With Solo for Tamburium, Hennix plays and manipulates recordings of her precisely tuned and continuously sustained tamburas through a keyboard interface, fusing tones into psychoacoustic textures in the style of her early modal works
Universal Synthesizer Interface Volume Two
In 2019, Vancouver artist Kristen Roos came across a floppy disk for sale on eBay containing the Commodore Amiga version of Laurie Spiegel's 'Music Mouse'. This was one of the first intelligent instruments for personal computers, created by Spiegel in 1985 as an interactive and playable MIDI sequencer for the 68k era of Macintosh computers. Curious, he bid on the item and ended up winning it for a few dollars. Upon investigation, the simple and intuitive nature of its interface appealed to him, …
Snooze
American pianist and composer Joanne Brackeen has been called the "Picasso of jazz piano" for her unique style and complex improvisations. Her work is at the forefront of what avant-garde jazz can be and she has long been one of the giants of modal, post-pop piano.
Snooze from 1975 is Brackeen's extraordinary debut album. Featuring four outstanding Brackeen compositions, along with her take on Wayne Shorter's "Nefertiti," Miles Davis' "Circles," and the standard "Old Devil Moon."
A child prodigy…
Love’s Lesson
Fifth vinyl album (there have been four cassettes as well) by this Baltimore-based duo with international roots. Zomes began as a solo project by Asa Osbourne (ex-Lungfish, The Pupils), and recorded mostly solo drone-based instrumentals for several years. While performing at a festival in Stockholm, Asa met vocalist Hanna Olivegren, who shared his musical conceptions. Zomes's first record as a duo was 2013's Time Was (Thrill Jockey), and they have remained a two-piece ever since. The music on Lo…
Il Segreto
Quartet Records, in collaboration with GDM and EMI General Music, presents a completely revised and remastered edition of Ennio Morricone’s classic score for the 1974 French polar directed by Robert Enrico and starring Jean-Louis Trintignant, Marlène Jobert and Philippe Noiret.
As the United States was brewing its own Watergate scandal, American filmmakers reflected on corrupt politics with the cultivation of the paranoia thriller—movies where singular protagonists come up against vast governmen…
Contrebasses
Guy Pedersen, French jazz-soul-funk double-bass player extraordinaire, recorded Contrebasses in 1970 for Tele Music. It's one of the most outstanding -- yet puzzlingly slept-on -- releases in the library's catalogue. Forget library, this is basically a sublime, straight-up moody jazz record with monster breaks. It's brimming with sensational psychedelic/jazzy bass-heavy moments throughout. "Indian Pop Bass" contains a deep, abstract breakbeat that intersects with a bassline that loops as if it s…
The Infinite
2023 much-need repress. Nat Birchall continues apace with his “one-semble” recording projects, this album being the fourth one to feature only Nat himself playing all the instruments. The Infinite presents seven original compositions loosely based around various mystical aspects of the universe. The recording demonstrates Nat’s belief in the music having its own life outside of any human input, and also that it has its own laws and innate sense of balance and form, as does the universe itself. A…
Crashin' From Passion
Red Vinyl Edition. In the 1970s, Betty Davis defied genre and gender by pushing her voice to extremes and embracing the erotic. She articulated a kind of pre-punk, funk-blues fusion that had yet to be normalized in mainstream music – a style that few musicians have come close to replicating. As one of the first Black women to write, arrange, and produce her own albums, Betty was a visionary who disregarded industry boundaries and constraints. Raw, unapologetic and in full control, Betty paved th…
Is It Love Or Desire
Silver Vinyl Edition. Betty Davis was a musical maverick with vision. Image, substance, sex, and grit combined with a badass band that could deliver the funk bed backbone to the sultry music between the sheets. After cutting two notorious discs for the Just Sunshine label (Betty Davis, and They Say I’m Different), and Nasty Gal for Island Records, Davis went to work on her most personal and expressive record yet. After capturing 10 hard-hitting tracks in 1976 at the remote Studio In The Country …
Musick To Play In The Dark
* 2021 Ltd. repress on black vinyl * Few groups in recent history forged as confounding and alchemical a body of work as Coil, the partnership of Peter 'Sleazy' Christopherson and John Balance. From album to album and phase to phase their recordings spelunk perplexing depths of esoteric industrial, occult electronics, and drugged poetry, both embodying and alienating parallel currents of their peers. The late 1990's in particular were a fertile era for the duo, embracing chance, chaos, and colla…
Milano: Il Clan Dei Calabresi
Four Flies' 45s series continues to pay tribute to the golden age of Italian film music, this time with the first 7-inch release ever of two super-groovy themes from Gianni Marchetti's soundrack to Milano: il clan dei calabresi (known in English as The Last Desperate Hours), a 1974 poliziottesco film directed by Giorgio Stegani. "M2", on side A, is a re-versioning of a timeless classic – Quincy Jones' "Ironside" theme – where the punch of funk comes to the fore and is fused with the acid sound o…
Un Uomo Dalla Pelle Dura
Releasing Italian soundtrack gems on 7" has become a mission for Four Flies! This time the label went back to Franco Prosperi's 1972 film Un uomo dalla pelle dura (known in English as either The Boxer or Ripped-Off) and hand-picked two tracks that were included not in the (now uber-rare) original OST album released on Pegaso/RCA, but in the (even rarer) library album Meedley (sic) released by Carlo Pes a couple of years later, where, needless to say, he was accompanied by his legendary quartet …
Casanova’70 (Expanded Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
Quartet Records, in collaboration with Sony EMI Music Publishing Italia and GDM, presents a greatly expanded release of an Armando Trovajoli gem from a Marcello Mastroianni comedy. Directed by Mario Monicelli in 1965, Casanova’70 tells the story of UN diplomat Andrea Rossi-Colombotti, whose globetrotting adventures leave him sexually frustrated. Women throw themselves at the handsome man, but he unfortunately has performance issues: he can only get aroused if there is some sort of chase involve…