Reissues
For the Moment
American-born, Japan-based composer John Di Stefano self-released a number of cassettes as part of the 80s DIY underground on his own imprint Oktron Produktions, including Klang's Drift, a collaboration with Joel Graham. Living in San Francisco, Di Stefano had access to multiple University electronic music studios, where he had an impressive array of synthesizers at his fingertips, including both Buchla and Serge modular systems. Combining his knowledge of modular synthesis with a background in …
One Million Years
Limited edition of 250 numbered copies. This edition of 4 audio CDs in a wooden case comprises the reading of On Kawara's One Million Years [Past and Future], with Gemma Saunders as the female voice reading all even numbers and Leo Chadburn as the male voice reading all odd numbers.One Million Years is originally a 20-volume collection, each volume contains 200 pages and each page holds 500 typed years. Created in 1969, One Million Years [Past] contains the years 998,031 B.C. through 1969 A.D., …
Austin Funk
**1000 numbered copies** Jazzman Records presents a reissue of Steamheat's Austin Funk, originally issued in 1975 and presented here as Number 29 in the Jazzman Holy Grail Series. Fable is a small independent record label started in Austin, Texas in the early 1970s by a young trombone player named Michael Mordecai. In autumn 1975 he debuted a trio of albums by Austin bands; with only 1000 of each pressed, and each carrying a different emphasis on soul, funk or jazz, all three have gone on to bec…
Attica Blues / Quiet Dawn
Previously Japan-only 7” featuring two tracks originally released on Archie Shepp's 1972 classic soul-jazz LP, Attica Blues. A powerful mix of psychedelic soul and jazz that retains Shepp’s political sentiment of his earlier works. Attica Blues is a huge funk-soul composition, referring to a mass shooting of inmates at Attica Prison. Henry Hull's vocal sits on top of bass, layered percussion, wah-wah guitars, plus large horn and string sections to create a massive sound. The big band, almost sou…
Poema da Gota Serena
An exhilarating blend of free jazz, the roots rhythms of northeastern Brazil, electronics and Asian percussion, from 1982. Zé Eduardo Nazário is a virtuoso drummer. In the late '60s he was a regular at the famous Totem night club in São Paulo, performing alongside the likes of Tenório Jr. With Guilherme Franco, he formed the Grupo Experimental de Percussão. Besides recordings with Hermeto Pascoal and Egberto Gismonti, he is most celebrated for his six years tenure with the pioneering Grupo Um. E…
Alien Paradigm
**25 copies** Psychedelic sounds and parellel universes and dimensions. Mixed in a futuristic washing machine (from Egypt), later sundried, and then cooked in a spring water with olive oil, Buddha's tears, goethite pieces and rainbow colours. Originally released by Magma Tones in 2017, this cassette version contains one bonus track. Recorded in Turku, Finland. Music and sleeve art by Jani Hirvonen.
Visceral Realists
Debut LP by the New Zealand duo of Bruce Russell (Dead C, Handful of Dust, etc) and Luke Wood. Visceral Realists is a high-concept commentary on the state of vinyl, analogue recording, music culture, art, etc. A 45-rpm bullet of short bursts of free electric sound, the music here is tactile and rough but not “noise music.” Russell and Wood play over loops of scratchy records, with their guitars and electronics surging to get over the wall. Russell’s guitar sound from his vintage transistor amp a…
In the Woods
On Rimarimba’s 1985 album In The Woods, Robert Cox has made his music kit, an odd assortment of new and old technologies, lately fixated on the digital delay, and programming technologies, sing his own song at its most articulate clip. The songs seem more developed, fluent, like mini-suites in some sense. By his third album, it’s clear Cox has recognised just how liberating technology can be – “All these intricate layers of things that I was trying to play, and didn’t have the musical ability to…
Les Archives
Les Archives is composed, arranged, and produced by the elusive Japanese artist June Chikuma. While Freedom To Spend’s reinvented edition bares little visual evidence of its origins in the composer’s name, title, or sleeve design, the album, a whooping gonzo of synthesizers, samplers, drum machines, and a mysterious string quartet, remains as vibrant now as it did when released on Toru Hatano’s Picture Label as Divertimento in 1986. In fact, the music of Les Archives now glows with a different p…
On Dry Land
For Rimarimba’s 1984 album On Dry Land, Robert Cox advances along the terrain explored on Below The Horizon. It’s an enchanting album, one which, at times, seems to comment on its own practice; a picture of everyday life in the hobbyist’s, or part-time musician’s, recording studio. Some moments point towards the tourist-explorer aesthetic that would eventually coalesce under the banner of Fourth World music. Other moments where Cox seems to be channelling an otherness, a kind of hauntological re…
Sound American no. 21
The 127-page book was designed by Remake Design (who also created the now iconic Donald Judd: Writings book) and features words by or about Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste, Ornette Coleman, Nicole Kaack, Bradford Bailey, G. Lucas Crane, Jennie Gottschalk, Ambrose Akinmusire, Mats Gustafsson, Peter Margasak, Terry Riley, Kim Brandt, John Cage, Josh Sinton, Edgard Varése, Marc Hannaford, John Zorn, Matthew Mehlan, Million Tongues Festival, Alex Mincek, Lester St. Louis, and Steve Lehman. Each book is th…
Where Fortune Smiles
Re-mastered edition of the 1971 album performed by the legendary enterprise consisting of John McLaughlin on guitars, John Surman on reeds, Karl Berger on vibes, Stu Martin on drums, and Dave Holland on bass. Recorded at the end of May 1970 at the Apostolic Studios in New York, “Fortune Smiles” is a jazz fusion LP that sees all five musicians experimenting equally with their outstanding music qualities. Released here as a picture disc and featuring the original Dawn Records folded insert, the al…
Arrival
Double LP version. Black Vinyl. Their first two albums, Exit and Enter, were presented with sizable and ambitious line-ups of 28 musicians. Ritual saw it reduced to 21 and with Arrival it's been trimmed down to a "mere" 14, with the core trio of Fire! (Mats Gustafsson, Johan Berthling, and Andreas Werliin) and the two singers Mariam Wallentin and Sofia Jernberg being the only constant members since the beginning. Apart from this reduction, the main line-up difference is the introduction of a str…
Rosa De Sangue
(180gr pressing) Polysom official reissue of this monster rarity. Originally custom pressed in 1980, ‘Rosa de Sangue’ is the closing chapter of the amazing Recife psychedelic movement that flourished and centred around the work of Lula Côrtes, beginning in 1973 with the release of Satwa, and the creation of ‘abracadabra’, Lula’s loose art/music/design collective. “I want to close all of this with a golden key”… and a golden key it is.Entering a small local studio with a head full of songs and hi…
Aéroproducts
Rotorelief presents a reissue of Alésia Cosmos' Aéroproducts, originally released in 1985, with bonus material. In the '80s, Alésia Cosmos was one of those pioneering groups that invented a handful of things: uprooted electro, pop-shifted funk. With some synths, rhythm boxes, magnetic tapes, crazy guitars and hallucinated voices, they rocked the underground for four years, with two albums, playing live in France and Europe. The dazzling epic of the magic combo has become legendary in the margin …
Mother Earth's Plantasia
**Mort Garson’s cult 1976 album Mother Earth’s Plantasia officially reissued for the first time by Sacred Bones. Comes with fully restored original booklet with new liner notes by Andy Beta (Pitchfork). All vinyl copies come with seed paper download card – plant it and watch it sprout!** Mort Garson is well known as one of the pioneers of electronic music in the late '60s; some may have heard of his contributions to quite a few pop hits back in the day, when he wrote and conducted orchestral arr…
Experimental I / Mechanical I
When Harry Bertoia's Sonambient label was resurrected, Important Records' intention was to tell the story of Bertoia's groundbreaking Sonambient work as revealed through his extensive collection of notes and recordings. When the first new LP was released in 2016, Important were only in possession of 1/20th of the archive. Now, in 2019, the label is excited to release the first LP of new material from the full archive and they present it to increase understanding of what Bertoia was doing in his …
Kostüme
**120 copies** Die Tödliche Doris was born out of West Berlin’s lively post-punk community in the early ‘80s. Along with Einstürzende Neubauten, Malaria, Sprung Aus Den Wolken and Frieder Butzmann, Die Tödliche Doris ranks amongst the Geniale Dilletanten – which roughly translates as “ingenious dilettantes” – who sought to democratize cultural productions beyond the grip of both Western capitalism and GDR socialism. The Geniale Dilletanten became synonymous with a free-for-all approach to music,…
ExpoZoom 1969
The history of music is never concrete. It’s forever changing and rewriting itself. The past becomes the present and the present reforms the past. What was lost is found, and what was known is lost. Our era, defined by the reissue and archival release, will likely be regarded as a definitive period of historical reparisal and reevaluation. Monumental figures have fallen. The obscure and unheralded have finally received their rightful due. Dark Companion’s latest LP - Ron Geesin’s ExpoZoom 1969, …
Homework
**300 copies** Original, limited LP-only edition released as Super Secret Sound (3SLP010) in 1997. Sunny Murray - drums, Bob Dickie - bass, bass clarinet, Robert Andreano - guitar, bass. Recorded 30 May, 1994 at 816 South St. Philadelphia, PASpecial assistance - Cowboy Keith Thompson. Artwork - Wayne Hamilton (1966-2009).Engineered and mixed by Robert Andreano - Photographs of Sunny and Robert taken 11th June, 1994 at St. Stephen’s Church 19 S. 10th Street, Philadelphia, PA by Thomas V. Hartmann…