Live at Bam Balam
Richard Pinhas, the founder of '70s legends Heldon, is one of France's best-known experimental musicians and is a key figure in development of rock music fusing with electronic music. Live at Bam Balam is solo guitar and processing as well as drone electronics with the use of a Metatronic Delay system: no re-recording. This brilliant collection of solo improvisations was recorded in Bordeaux (France) on April 16th, 2016 and April 21st, 2018. Limited edition vinyl-only release for the French Reco…
Arc 1
Finnish label Sähkö Recordings is launching a new archival series of unreleased work from its co-founder Mika Vainio. The late Vainio left behind plenty of unreleased material after his passing in 2017. Arc 1 represents the first in a series of releases that draw on Vainio’s archives. The material here was constructed for a 1994 radio project, entitled Ambient City, that Vainio performed as Ø. Both sides here begin with perturbed ambient synth-scapes - grumbling LFOs, digital noise, that sort of…
Nothing Is Objective
Spanish ambient composer Suso Saiz deepens his relationship with Music From Memory with the release of a new album, Nothing Is Objective. This joins 2017’s Rainworks as his second full-length album for the label, following archival collections of solo music and of his group Orquesta De Las Nubes. Nothing Is Objective was recorded in Madrid in 2018 during a period of transcendental change and creative awakening for Suso. It captures the composer as he develops a renewed relationship with his inst…
Desert Drone Cycle
**125 copies** Cristopher Cichocki is an interdisciplinary artist from the Coachella Valley, with an extensive body of work that examines transmorphic cycles of decay and renewal. His multi-faceted practice addresses environmental and socio-political disintegration above and beneath the surface of everyday perception. Cichocki is as accomplished in maximalist, immersive composition as he is with painting, sculpture, photography, video, installation and Land art interventions. Desert Drone Cycle …
Sirens
"When I was 22 I managed to acquire Techno Animal’s Demonoid 12" at a local record store, Rocking Horse Records. I can still recall the intensities of sound that marked the first moments of listening to it. The sense of bass as a tactile surface, that rolling groove and the howling sine waves and dub sirens that scorched with a type of sonic burning sensation that to this day makes my hairs stand on end. A year later I heard Ice’s Bad Blood, from there I discovered The Bug through a release on W…
Not Knowing
**200 copies** "Not knowing is my fifth accordion solo and a new challenge for the instrument itself, here treated as an object in space. Whereas in the other recordings the centre of attention was put in materiality, structure or deconstruction, with microphones extremely close to the instrument, almost inside it, here the point of inflexion is the architecture and space as an essential part of the recording. It's still with an exploratory intention that I try to blur the limits of what to expe…
Horizontal Alliances, Vertical Conflicts
**200 copies** Nine threads. Time in slices. Viewed from the side, events and relationships hang down in long, vibrating strings. The motion of tiny lives, suspended from an unknowable sky and travelling through wire to reach the ground where they dissipate; taken together, a trembling chorus of lives. Two lives, here. Nine years ago, things were simpler and more idealistic. The first Rose and Sandy release took the sound of a sort-of-zither and strung it out into gaseous and lambent chords. Alm…
Obscurum per oscurius
**200 copies** Operating under his own name as well as MVK and Swerve, Matthijs Kouw (his second name is Vincent, hence the V) has released music since 2011. Solo work as well as collaborations, works for dance, film theater and installations. Most recently, he focuses on long-form drone pieces, often in collaboration with Radboud Mens. Obscurum per obscurius is a latin phrase that can be translated as "(explaining) the obscure by means of the more obscure". A well-chosen title for this collecti…
Humlebier
"This cassette contains different versions of a kind of static music consisting of humming sound formations. Various parts are combined in constantly different ways and activated or paused at a slowly changing pace. The three versions have different tempos with different characters ensuing. Simple looped motifs repeating themselves form the basis. Some of these are capable of modifying the pitch of each other. I have acted as a musician playing the computer sequencer by changing tempo, allowing …
Le vray remède d'amour
**300 copies** Le vray remède d'amour is a collection of seven tracks recorded between 2012 and 2019 with a 'Boîte à Bourdons/Drone Box' constructed by Léo Maurel, a mechanical electroacoustic hurdy-gurdy with four strings and sliders to play an adjustable chord in sustained twisted tones, drones and complex overtones + one duet with Gaspar Claus on cello. Recorded and composed in Paris at Sophia & Baphomet studios, mastered and cut at DK Mastering by Thomas Gonet and Hervé de Keroullas. 2D cove…
Drone Islands - Land Rising
**200 copies** Pitchfork Media and Allmusic journalist Mark Richardson defined drone music thus: "The vanishing-point music created by drone elders Phill Niblock and, especially, LaMonte Young is what happens when a fixation on held tones reaches a tipping point. Timbre is reduced to either a single clear instrument or a sine wave, silence disappears completely, and the base-level interaction between small clusters of "pure" tone becomes the music's content. This kind of work takes what typicall…
Sounding / Way
Pauline Oliveros and Guy Klucevsek's Sounding / Way was originally released on cassette in 1986 and has been out of print ever since. This LP was cut by John Golden and pressed at RTI in order to achieve a quiet, dynamic pressing. The Sounding / Way concept was simple: each artist would write a piece for two accordions and then they would perform them together. Thus, side A contains Guy Klucevsek's Tremolo No. 6 performed by Guy Klucevsek and Pauline Oliveros. Side B contains Pauline's compositi…
Drift
**100 copies** Drift is a free fall album consisting of three compositions invoking a sense of hovering expansion. Deeply spacious yet tightly compacted sound movements create holding patterns that slowly shift and evolve. Cycles fall in and out of sync while atmospheres envelope time, appearing on the periphery before being subsumed back into space. The compositions utilize modified alto saxophone with spring reverb attachment, synthesizers, percussion, field recordings and electronic processin…
Tomodachi
On Tomodachi, Stijn Hüwels gives us the best of his two worlds by combining his solo studio work with his collaborative efforts: “The starting point for this album was simple. I sent out a question to fellow musicians I deeply respect and whose work I especially like. I know all of them for some time, and they all have a significant influence on my work. I asked them to send me 'something', a sample, melody or field recording I could use to create a new piece of music. This exchange of inspirati…
Gold Fiction Loop Garden
Field Records present the first vinyl edition of John Elliott's previously cassette-only album titled 'Gold Fiction Loop Garden' from 2016. Aside from curating the Spectrum Spools imprint and taking part in the bands Emeralds, Organic Dial, and Outer Space, Elliott has put out two absorbing solo albums over the last ten years. His solo works as Imaginary Softwoods fit in the tradition of kosmische greats without ever delving into pastiche. This third album from Elliott features a collection of s…
Oak House
**200 copies** Behind Oak House stands mysterious D. Carfagna, who created these very effective Ambient tiny jewels with a guitar and a 4-track recorder in a long razed house in midtown Kansas City, Missouri back in 1994-1997. Spacious guitar drones like a smooth blanket that make you feel comfortable and relax. Comes as a limited edition digipack featuring artwork by the author himself.
Protector’s Tea
**Archival package, with old-style sleeve and insert edition of 400** Protector’s Tea is the debut solo LP from Gabe Celestino, a native of the Olympic Peninsula. Despite being largely recorded in isolation over the last year with minimal gear in the drab, alienating confines of an apartment building located in the midst of an industrial zone on the outskirts of Seoul, South Korea, Celestino was nevertheless able to re-imagine his dreary living quarters into a sacred space through the acts of wa…
The Devastation Chant
**100 copies** Another rare item originally published on a single-sided lathe cut record (8 copies only!) returns to the light. Dirk Serries' 'The Devastation Chant' was part of the "8+8" series released by 13 back in 2015, and since then has become quite a rarity. This time it is re-released as a limited edition 10" vinyl record coming in a deluxe gatefold sleeve, with the flipside offering an unreleased piece culled from the same sessions. As in the best Serries / Vidna Obmana / Fear Falls Bur…
Chords
With ‘Chords’, the Stockholm-based musician and composer Ellen Arkbro returns to Subtext, following her acclaimed debut album ‘For Organ and Brass’. This new longplayer sees Arkbro adopt a more minimalist approach, focusing on the immediate qualities of sound and elegantly expanding the tonal capacities of acoustic instruments using precise, subtle synthesis. Composed of a carefully selected combination of tones, ‘Chords’ stretches, extends and obscures the timbral character of the instruments i…
Cut Down and Re-order
**100 copies** 13 bless us with the due re-issue of a masterful track created by Carl Michael Von Hausswolff for their "8+8" series that was originally published on a single-sided lathe cut record (8 copies only!) back in 2015. This time 'Cut down and Re-order' comes as a limited edition 10" vinyl record, and the flipside offers a completely unreleased piece which is dedicated to Zbigniew Karkowski. Both numbers are pure bliss - and ecstastic in equal measure - with the title track also borderin…