Reissues

The mantra repeats for thirteen minutes, hypnotic as a highway journey, ecstatic as a stadium anthem. It's 1976 and Klaus Dinger - the drummer who invented the motorik beat, the man who alongside Michael Rother created Neu! and redefined the very concept of rhythm in rock - has a new machine to drive. He's christened it with the name of his hometown on the Rhine. And the first record he makes with this new formation is called, of course, La Düsseldorf. The first two tracks? Düsseldorf and La Düs…

A heretical symbol of Rare Groove, with its alternative and avant-garde ferocity! Irvine Weldon's 1973 masterpiece, which continues to have a wide influence around the world even today! Although it is based on jazz, it is a work released in 1973 that is more soul/funk than the first album, and reflects more experimental and political aspects and ideas. For over 30 years, it has been loved by diggers all over the world and reigns at the top of the rare groove as a most wanted item, and today the …

2026 stock “If I’ve accomplished anything,” said Ravi Shankar, “it’s that I have been able to open the door to our music in the West.” Born in Varanasi in 1920, he achieved worldwide renown as a sitar player and unprecedented influence as an ambassador for Indian classical music, revealing new possibilities to such figures as George Harrison of the Beatles, jazz saxophonist John Coltrane and composer Philip Glass. As a performer, composer, teacher and writer, Ravi Shankar is renowned throughout …

Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band are showcased over 12 tracks recorded live for radio and TV. The material is sourced from two 1968 sessions for John Peel plus a 1972 appearance on Beat Club and features tracks from four different Beefheart LPs. Beat Club tracks are excellent sound quality. BBC tracks are recorded off air but are still thoroughly listenable. Comes with full credits and comprehensive sleeve notes.

The self‑titled Epsilon introduces Epsilon as one of those early‑70s outfits that understood rock not as a fixed style but as a volatile intersection of impulses: hard rock muscle, blues phrasing, progressive ambition, and a lingering psychedelic afterglow. The album moves with the confidence of a band that has internalised late‑60s British rock grammar - heavy guitar, insistent Hammond, a rhythm section that can punch and pivot - yet refuses to collapse into pure riff worship. Instead, the grou…

On Clandestine Anticipation, Krisma leave Italo-disco behind for a humid, video‑age dystopia, nine songs where synthetic funk, proto‑industrial atmosphere, and tropical mirages collide into one of the strangest Italian pop artefacts of the early 80s.

The 2018 release of Universal Beings, in many ways, feels like the moment that the gates swung open for both Makaya McCraven and International Anthem. On one hand, it's a four-sided communal showcase of the inter-city exchange that had started to develop in the “new jazz” hubs, collecting group improvisations from New York, London, Chicago, and Los Angeles. On the other, it is an editing and post-production masterclass – the MVP of McCraven’s “organic beat music” concept – and a landmark moment …

Recorded live at Detroit’s Grande Ballroom in 1968 and released in 1969, MC5’s Kick Out The Jams turns a single night into an explosive proto‑punk manifesto, fusing free‑jazz chaos, garage rock riffing, and revolutionary rhetoric into one compressed blast of electricity.

Genesi (Opera in Tre Atti)" is a three-act opera composed by Franco Battiato, premiered at the Teatro Regio in Parma on April 26, 1987. This release captures the live recording from subsequent performances in late April and early May 1987, released on CD by Fonit Cetra. ​The story unfolds with gods observing humanity's decline and contemplating a new flood, but they send four archangels as human messengers to Earth. The archangels discover a secretive brotherhood devoted to sacred dance and esot…

** 2026 Stock ** Satie is the point where Erik Satie’s so‑called “furniture music” stops being background and becomes a way of listening to the world. In these recordings, Aldo Ciccolini approaches Satie not as a quirky footnote to Debussy and Ravel but as a composer who quietly rewired 20th‑century music from the inside. The repertoire typically centres on the iconic cycles - Trois Gymnopédies, Trois Gnossiennes and companion pieces like the Nocturnes and Trois morceaux en forme de poire - work…

On Felona E/And Sorona 2016, Le Orme revisit their classic sci‑fi concept with a contemporary studio language, stretching the tale of twin planets into a more spacious, synth-forward sound that drifts between nostalgia and quiet reinvention.

*Cover TBA* The original soundtrack for “Garage: Bad Dream Adventure,” long regarded among gamers as a “legendary cult classic,” will finally be released on vinyl ahead of its 30th anniversary. The game's setting is a labyrinthine world of ruinous wooden structures, rusted metal, and sewage-filled passages.Tomonori Tanaka's music seeps through the cracks of this meticulously constructed world, cold and shadowed as if sinking into the depths, stirring an indescribable unease while simultaneously …

2026 repress with new cover art, which is the original artwork designed by Takao firstly released on his private Bandcamp page in early 2018. "Stealth" is the aptly-titled debut album from Tokyo-based composer/producer Takao. Gliding in under the radar with thirteen slyly sweet and subtle miniatures, these pieces are refreshing light-explosions of gentle harmony and modestly grand melodies. Fans of New Age and tonal minimalism wil enjoy this music, but its brevity reveals a pop-influenced aesthe…

Wewantsounds is delighted to release for the 1st time on vinyl Brion Gysin's cult recordings, produced by Ramuntcho Matta in the 80s and early 90s. The release features the hypnotic 32-minute journey "Dreamachine," which transforms the effects of Gysin's legendary light art device into a mesmerizing audio experience, alongside the track "The Door," featuring the visionary saxophonist Steve Lacy. A towering figure in avant-garde art, literature, and sound, Gysin influenced generations of creators…

*2026 repress* On his debut album “Scattered Memories”, the composer, musician and true master on the Iranian spike fiddle kamancheh Saba Alizadeh blends his instrumental virtuosity with spherical electronics, samples of Persian music instruments and field recordings from his hometown Tehran. Born in Tehran in 1983 as son of the world renowned Tar and Setar virtuoso Hossein Alizadeh, Saba Alizadeh studied the Iranian spike fiddle with Saeed Farajpoury and Keyhan Kalhor plus photography and later…

"When you notice the cheerful mystery playing with the synths, the edges of this small world start to look slightly distorted. In any era, someone is always creating mysterious music on their own." - 7FO

Somewhere between heaven and hell…there is Fallen Angel. Dark Entries continues its mission of shining light on a generation of composers and musicians lost to AIDS with Brandy Dalton’s Fallen Angel, his soundtrack work for the award-winning Fallen Angel series. Brandy was known for many years in the LA underground for his performances with his boyfriend, Robert Woods, who was the resident DJ at Club Fuck. Eventually, they recruited John Munt to form the band Drance, becoming infamous for their …

Gman+ gathers some of the most elusive material from Merzbow’s 2011–2012 period and welds it into a single, punishing disc, four tracks that function as both archival rescue and self‑contained statement. The collection pulls together work originally issued in limited form, recasting it as a crucial chapter in the same cycle that produced Kumo No Zettaichi, Sugamo Flower, Bit Bluesand Kotorhizome. Across “Gman”, “HJYUGTF2”, “Hakutouwashi” and “Lop 13”, Masami Akita works out a language of layered…

Kotorhizome catches Merzbow in a phase where noise stops behaving like a vertical wall and starts acting more like an underground network. Recorded between 2011 and 2012 and released later as part of the Slowdown archive cycle, the album is built from a deceptively modest setup: small koto, synth, and drone box woven into three extended pieces. The title fuses “koto” with “rhizome,” hinting at what the music does structurally - traditional string resonance is fed into electronics and allowed to …

Bit Blues sits in the middle of Merzbow’s Horizon cycle like a scorched signpost, three tracks cut from performances recorded at Munemihouse in 2011 and 2012 and later remastered in 2021. All the music is by Masami Akita, working with a small, intensely exploited setup that favours dense, bit‑crushed textures and overdriven loops over the more sprawling configurations of earlier decades. The title points in two directions at once: “bit” as in digital grain and reduced resolution; “blues” as in a…

Sugamo Flower compresses a particular 2011 moment in Merzbow’s practice into two long tracks that feel like one continuous, mutating organism. Both pieces are sourced from performances recorded that year, later repurposed as material for “Sugamo Flower Festival” on the split LP Freak Hallucinations with Actuary (2012), which gives the album a double life: document of an event and quarry for subsequent work. Central to the sound is the return of the Korg AX30 multi‑effect pedal, a unit Masami Aki…

On Kumo No Zettaichi, Merzbow trades drum violence for a hall of hovering machines, two 2011 pieces where small drone boxes, oscillators, and minikoto threads knot into a dense but strangely weightless sky of electric weather. It is harsh ambient as charged cloud bank rather than blunt impact.​

On Arijigoku, Merzbow drags live drums and high-saturation electronics into the same pit, a 2008 vortex where blast-beat turbulence and molten noise spiral together like a ritual gone feral. It is harsh music with a striking sense of propulsion, less wall than constantly collapsing tunnel.

Yono's Journey invites listeners to travel through Akita's sonic landscapes, perhaps following an animal guide. Merzbow turns a 2007 home-recorded session into a three-part storm, where hyper-saturated feedback and low-end throb fold into each other like a moving landslide. It is Japanoise as pure velocity: no narrative, just impact reshaping the inner ear.

The ominous title evokes fallen empires, decadent excess, historical weight. Rome - eternal city, center of classical and Catholic civilization - becomes "Black," suggesting inversion, corruption, death. Perhaps this is Rome during plague, Rome in ashes, Rome as symbol of all empires' inevitable decline. Black Rome channels these associations into dense, imposing noise constructions demonstrating apocalyptic intensity. Empire rises and falls; Merzbow provides the soundtrack to collapse.

Electronic Union suggests synthesis, merger, coalition - multiple electronic elements combining into unified sonic statements. These mid-2000s recordings demonstrate Akita's mature integration of diverse digital techniques, creating hybrid approaches transcending any single method. "Union" implies collective action, solidarity, workers organizing - perhaps the various electronic components forming their own labor movement against conventional music's exploitation.

Merzbird (Important Records, 2004) stands among the most celebrated laptop-era releases. This "Variation" offers alternate perspectives on that material - different plumage for the same sonic creature. Bird imagery connects to Akita's growing animal rights consciousness while invoking bird-inspired composition traditions from Olivier Messiaen to contemporary field recording. The bird represents freedom, flight, song - yet also vulnerability, threatened ecosystems, species extinction. Merzbow's b…

The evocative title conjures thresholds between states of matter - solid becoming liquid becoming gas becoming plasma. Plasma Door captures Merzbow at a moment of material transformation, sound itself seeming to change state under extreme pressure. Plasma - the fourth state of matter, found in stars and lightning - represents extreme energy, matter pushed beyond normal limits. The "door" suggests passage, transition - portals to altered perceptual states. Listeners passing through this door ente…

Sphere Sessions suggests three-dimensional sound constructions - recordings enveloping listeners in dense, immersive noise environments. Akita's spatial awareness reached new sophistication in these mid-2000s productions - creating environments rather than merely sequences of events. The sphere represents perfection, completeness, infinite symmetry - yet these sessions likely explode such ideals, fragmenting smooth surfaces into jagged shards. The tension between geometric perfection and sonic c…

1633+ exemplifies Merzbow's confident command of laptop production techniques refined over five years of intensive experimentation. The numeric title resists interpretation - perhaps a date, perhaps a catalog number, perhaps pure abstraction. 1633 saw Galileo's trial; the number might reference suppressed truth, forbidden knowledge, the clash between orthodoxy and innovation. The "+" symbol indicates additional or expanded material, promising more than the basic number suggests.

The title references Yoshitsune, legendary Japanese warrior-hero - though "Metamo" suggests metamorphosis, transformation. Yoshitsune's story involves disguise, flight, and tragic loyalty - themes resonating with Akita's own constant transformations. Akita's engagement with Japanese history and mythology runs throughout his work, counterbalancing Western avant-garde influences often emphasized in critical discussions. The metamorphosis theme connects to Merzbow's endless mutations, each album tr…

Enclosure suggests both confinement and protection - sound as shelter, sound as prison. The title carries multiple resonances: the enclosures that contain animals in zoos and farms, the enclosure movement that privatized common lands, the sonic enclosure that surrounds listeners in dense noise. These transitional recordings capture Merzbow poised between decades. The enclosed quality - density, refusal of empty space - anticipates the wall-of-sound approach characterizing the golden era to come.…

The "Antimonument" concept looms large in Merzbow lore - the original 1985-86 album is considered a landmark in noise history, a foundational text for the genre. *Antimonument Tapes* offers invaluable context, documenting the creative process that yielded one of the genre's defining statements. These session recordings reveal how Akita assembled the finished work from raw materials. The "anti-monument" concept rejects permanence, solidity, commemorative function - Akita's sonic constructions exi…

Three tracks from the production of Konchuuki (Essence Music, 2015). The 28-minute centerpiece employs oscillator-modulated rhythms from a vintage Mach Rhythm Box RB-801, creating distinctive rhythmic patterns throughout—the album title references this equipment. New oscillator synths and drone machines create uneven noise acoustics and drones with shifting graininess, introducing fresh sonic colors to the Merzbow palette. The first track title "Fuyumushi" (winter insect) connects to the insect …

The Merzbow Archive series by Slowdown Records, which has released ten editions so far, enters its twelveth edition. This edition consists of recordings made between 2008 and 2009, when Merzbow developed a style that incorporated drumming. Although Masami Akita was originally a drummer heavily influenced by psychedelic rock, progressive rock, and other free music of the 70s, he avoided using drums in Merzbow (except in the duo with Kiyoshi Mizutani in the late 70s and in Merzbow Null in the earl…

Recorded during the height of the 13 Japanese Birds series production, these three performances capture Merzbow at peak drumming-era intensity. The centerpiece - a commanding 32-minute second track - demonstrates the extended improvisational structures characteristic of this period. The encounter with Balázs Pándi, a drummer sharing similar musical background (not only metal and grindcore, but also Sun Ra and free jazz), led to Merzbow's desire to pursue drumming as duo collaboration. After this…

Test mixes for Arijigoku (Vivo, 2008)—Merzbow's first full-fledged combination of live drums with improvised noise performance. Drums were recorded separately in a rented studio, then mixed with noise at a later date. This preliminary version offers vivid documentation of the trial-and-error process underlying a landmark release. The progression across three tracks demonstrates the range achievable through drum-noise synthesis: from the opening track's carefully balanced spatial composition to t…

Alternate mixes from two essential albums: Protean World (Noiseville, 2008) and Microkosmos (Blossoming Noise, 2009). Drumming was recorded separately in rented studio space, capturing Akita's return to the instrument after decades. The first track fuses drumming with improvisational noise - drums rampage at high velocity without steady beat, pure kinetic energy. The second and third tracks reveal different performance flavors: gradually intensifying roughness merging with noise, interwoven with…

Primarily computer-based but incorporating sampled drums, this album documents the earliest experiments leading to the full drum integration that would define this period. Finely cut drum sounds ricochet through space in the first two tracks, with fierce original drum performances unexpectedly emerging between the processed fragments—allowing listeners to experience drums in multiple transformed states. Recorded just one month before the Anicca sessions, Drumorph captures the pivotal moment when…

Recorded as prototype material for the Here album (L. White Records, 2008) but ultimately unused. Deafening self-made instrument sounds run parallel with dull, boomy distorted noise, their synergy creating a strong sense of speed. Very few sounds identifiable as laptop-generated appear—indicating increased analog equipment use following the 2005 transition. The "Etude" designation for three tracks suggests methodical exploration, studies in specific techniques. The color title evokes synesthetic…