Reissues
Bert Jansch
Scottish singer-songwriter Bert Jansch recorded his first album in producer Bill Leader's London flat with a borrowed guitar, sitting on the edge of the bed and singing into a portable tape recorder. As author Richie Unterberger writes in the liner notes, "When Bert Jansch's self-titled debut LP was issued in April 1965, he was already a major figure on the British folk scene. His synthesis of traditional British folk with blues and a bit of jazz was at the vanguard of a new generation of UK fol…
Grotesque
Bursting into the 1980s on a new label (the then-upstart, now-legendary Rough Trade) and with an augmented, audibly panicked lineup, The Fall's Grotesque is the true pure-bred Fall release from the Marc Riley era. Released in the immediate wake of The Fall's most beloved single (Totally Wired), the album carries over that righteously famed teeth-chattering, bolstered in no small part by the drumming of new addition Paul Hanley, brother of bassist Steve Hanley and aged only 15 at the time of reco…
Slates
If The Fall truly is a cult band, then Slates both benefits from and reinforces such shrouded obsessions. In presenting these six particular songs as a 10-inch EP, the inherent and attractive difficulty of The Fall's sound is made physical, framing the urgency of their singles from this period (notably How I Wrote 'Elastic Man' and Lie Dream of a Casino Soul) alongside lengthy rumblings normally restricted to long players.The tumbling and phased "Middle Mass" begins on an incredible high note, s…
Electronic Sound
2016 repress. Electronic Sound is George Harrison's second solo album, and the second and final record released on the Beatles' short-lived Zapple Records (an offshoot of Apple Records), before it was folded at the insistence of The Beatles' then-manager Allen Klein. Released in May 1969, it features two lengthy pieces - one per side on the original vinyl release - performed on the Moog synthesizer. Portions of white noise from "No Time or Space" are used throughout "I Remember Jeep", one of sev…
Ultima Thule
A superb collection of rare early tracks from electronic pioneers Tangerine Dream! Features 2 tracks from the ’60s psych-rock band that preceded Tangerine Dream, The Ones, plus rare tracks from the early ’70s era of the band when they were at their most adventurous, composing epic pieces that clocked in at over 10 minutes each such as “”Asteroid Agenda”" and “”Overture. Amazing floating space cosmic psychedelia
Faust IV
Exact replica, officially reissued by EMI. 180 gram audiophile pressing with printed inner sleeve; digitally remastered from original tapes. This reissue was "researched, spearheaded and co-ordinated" by Tom Recchion who has supplied rare artwork for the inner sleeve -- and, in general, this is a state-of-the-art edition. The fourth and final album to be released during Faust's original lifespan, originally released by Virgin Records in 1973. "As an album, IV matches the band's trajectory: Jumbl…
Aktivitat
Limited and numbered edition of 100 copies on clear vinyl. From 1983. Neuronal radioactivity, supported by ancestral sounds that emanate from atomic testing flows that absorb a loss of fallen energy. The mutant nucleus emits subtle scents of chemical processes for synthesizing the listener decay. Considered a high-water mark of early industrial, Maurizio Bianchi Aktivitat went against the grain prevalent at the time; rather than pushing the boundaries of volume and pummeling rhythm (f…
Kontraktion
The album “Kontraktion” is the result of two long sessions that have been recorded on tapes by Conrad Schnitzler and Siegmar Fricke in Con’s former studio Leberstrasse in Berlin. The five soundscapes (produced in November 1986 and July 1987 with EMS-Synthi A, KORG MS 10+20, delays) contain all the machinistic energy and infernal industrial sound-eruptions similar to Conrad’s first three albums “Schwarz”, “Rot” and “Blau” and to the rumbling train-wheel-rhythms of “Zug” (from the CON-album 1978).…
Drumming
Steve Reich’s Drumming , more than forty years after its composition, stands as a watershed document of modern music. In its ambitious scope, intellectual rigor, and artistic seriousness, this piece, along with Terry Riley’s In C and Philip Glass’s Music in Twelve Parts, went a long way toward establishing minimalism’s quickly expanding influence in the early 1970s.Most of Steve Reich’s early music is focused on phase patterns, in which a fixed rhythmic pattern is layered and moved in and out of…
Phases
Goodness me this is a little bit special - a dangerously low priced boxed set of all the major work of one of the 20th century's most important composers Steve Reich. Containing five full cds and a booklet (with loads of useful info to read while you're listening) this has everything a Reich beginner could possibly need: 'Music for 18 Musicians' (probably Reich's greatest achievement and spanning the entire first disc), 'Different Trains', 'Tehllim', 'Eight Lines', the Counterpoint series…
The ECM Recording
Marking the occasion of Steve Reich’s 80th birthday (hup, big man!), The ECM Recordings compiles three CDs of the venerable minimalist composer’s major works, which were consecutively released in 1978, 1980 and 1982, and continue to influence and inspire myriad forms of modern music. Named “our greatest living composer” (The New York Times), “America’s greatest living composer” (The Village Voice), and “…the most original musical thinker of our time” (The New Yorker), Reich’s ardent, incisive wo…
Wtc 9/11
Steve Reich composed WTC 9/11 in 2010 in homage to the victims of the attack on the World Trade Center, September 11th, 2001. First performed on March 19, 2011 at Duke University in North Carolina by the Kronos Quartet, WTC 9/11 would be played for the first time in New York, at Carnegie Hall, in late April of the same year.WTC 9/11 is written for a string quartet playing live, on which are juxtaposed pre-recorded voices and two string quartets. With a playing time of 16 minutes, the work is in …
I Do Play Rock And Roll
Jack Rose was a practitioner of his own unique brand of modern Appalachia, a master of the steel string, whether finger picking or playing with a slide, Rose can coax amazing sounds from a guitar, and all by his lonesome create lush steel string guitarscapes, that range from haunting and mysterious to folky and familiar.
This lp originally released in 2008 gathers up three long live tracks, all quite different. The first is a track from Kensington Blues, a big favorite around here, recorded…
Dr. Ragtime & His Pals
Back in the day, a new Jack Rose record was always cause for celebration around here. Along with James Blackshaw, Ilyas Ahmed, Richard Bishop and a few others, Rose was one of the new modern masters of the steel string guitar, helping to reinvent and redefine neo-Appalachia or modern folk or whatever you want to call it.Dr. Ragtime from 2008, features more of Rose's gorgeous steel string beauty, gossamer sheets of buzzing shimmer, droning ragas, traditional bluegrass, slippery slide, melancholy …
Jack Rose
John Coltrane died at age 40, and in retrospect it seems as if the intensity of activity in his last years, the sheer torrent of notes, was an attempt at purging the music from his soul before it was too late. The guitarist Jack Rose died at 38, in 2009, and listening back to his catalog one has a similar notion. Like Coltrane, Jack Rose’s last years were marked by a shimmering intensity, an outpouring of his spirit, onto audiences and records. I believe Jack Rose felt the duty of preservation b…
Chaos Primaire
Unreleased first Album recorded in 1982 in the serie Archives des musiques industrielles de France. A.I.Z. stands for Atrophisme Interne Z, and it was a very obscure French industrial band connected with Die Form or Pacific 231.This music remind some electronic material of Throbbing Gristle, and it's absolutely killer!
Graphic Works 1959-2016
Peter Brötzmann has always created and still creates the covers of his recordings himself – sometimes also for other musician colleagues – and in the past also often the posters for various FMP projects (Workshop Freie Musik in the Academy of Arts or Total Music Meeting in the Quartier Latin, later in Podewil). “Looking at his early posters and record covers it’s striking how fully formed his visual sense was from the very beginning. He had a background from both advertising and Fluxus art…
Das Orgien Mysterien Theater. 25. Aktion - Wiederaufgeführt
Hermann Nitsch - Orgien Mysterien Theater - 25. Aktion. Re-performance of 25. Action, March 1982 in the gallery Pakesch, Vienna. The premiere was in New York, in 1968. Hermann Nitsch, an Austrian painter, performance-artist and composer, was a crucial founding artist of "Viennese Actionism". He has held exhibitions and performed all over the world since the '60s. The idea of the very sensual and archaic Orgien Mysterien Theater was developed in the late '50s and has been performed in variations …
Le Labyrinthe Des Onix
In 1972 Francois de Roubaix and Bernard Maitre composed together the music of a TV series for children presented by puppets, called the Onix. The musical oddity here released by WeMe Records is a part of this OST. This piece of music demonstrates once again that Francois de Roubaix was in touch with all kinds of music of his time, including contemporary music. In this experimental track we can feel the influences of the composer Pierre Henry, an other explorer of unknown sounds. On the B …
Les Onix: Marionnettes, Theatre Et Television (1972-1976)
Brand new chapter in the saga of the legendary french composer Francois de Roubaix: built from home recording sessions with puppet master and co-composer Bernard Maitre (involving their unique collection of crypto-instruments collected from all over the globe), this first-time ever release of soundtrack for children puppet show "Les Onix" definitely might be ranked as one of the most unusually intimate and unfettered sonic items ever produced by Francois de Roubaix. From rubber duck march…