Hidden View
Leaving is the left-of-centre, electronics project of Rupert Thomas (Erasers), based in Perth, Western Australia. With a focus on hardware electronics, Thomas conjures immersive worlds of mood-driven synthesizer compositions that range from deep, slow moving ambience, to dense rhythms and hypnotic melodies. Forming over a decade ago as a home recording project on Whadjuk boodja (Perth, Western Australia), Thomas documented his early sound through a steady flow of CD-R’s and tapes before releasin…
The Play-Back
Lovingly packaged Lebanese CD of skillful turntablism from Dj Sniff on Annihaya.
Ear Bitten / No Vowels, No Bowels
Dark Entries picks up Severed Heads yet again for Ear Bitten, a double LP reissue of some of the band’s earliest material. As originary Aussie industrial legends - although founder Tom Ellard would balk at being branded as such - Severed Heads shaped the continental subcultural sound with their kitchen electronics, chaotic tape loops, and quietly infectious nursery-rhyme-esque melodies.
In 1979 Ellard, Richard Fielding, and Andrew Wright abandoned the moniker Mr. and Mrs. No Smoking Sign and ado…
Enochian Music For Beginners
What if Coil would have gone playing Black Metal music? Well, we cannot say it for sure, but probably the outcome could have been something very similar to some of these last Teatro Satanico tracks. Heavily influenced by explicit occult and esoteric topics, “Enochian Musick For Beginners" is an unforeseen psychedelic journey beyond the frontiers of the usual post-industrial noise. A true original mixture of electric and electronic frequencies. It got something new, something that inspires awe, s…
Micromegas
Seeing Matthew Erickson perform live is an impressive experience. The sound he gets by blasting his saxophone through his Fender Twin literally shakes you to the core. Erickson has a great ear for experimental music; exercising tasteful timing and restraint, which I am finding to be more and more important. Whether performing in the sax-guitar duo Sudden Oak, or solo as Radiant Husk, his sonic presence has earned the respect of many.
Radio Banana
Just when you think it's all over, along comes something completely unpredictable - in this case, a modest but uncompromisingly original confection that mixes latin brass arrangements (sort of), great drumming, medium wave radio and the many characters of the accordion. Simplicity, complexity, surprise, familiarity -and all without undue fuss but adding up to something exotic and new. Radio Banana is a record that wears its heart plainly on its sleeve. It doesn't play by genre rules, or fashion …
Tuba Intim
Contemporary music for tuba and a revelation of an under-utilised musical voice. For stretched and traditional techniques. Includes works by Lutz Glandien (Tuba and Tape), Morton Feldman, Igor Stravinsky and Michael himself. Excellent collection; and unusual.
Zgamoniums
File under early Russian industrial rock/art; Harry Partch, incorporating primitive analogue electronics. A legend in art and industrial music circles, ZGA was formed under the old regime in Riga, Lavia, in 1984, by Nick Sudnik and Valery Dudkhin. Unable to rehearse acoustically because of the neighbours, they invented their own instruments from scrap and springs and shaped metal fitted with contact microphones; these were not just noise instruments, but ways of accessing complex pitches, strang…
Argonautika
A sound drama for tuba and electronics that constructs its own rich, twilit, rather alien, world. Only the sound of the tuba (sometimes), a few waves and a little thunder sound familiar, everything else is a mysterious presence; the electronics are not at all conventional and though much of the sound is clearly derived somehow from the tuba, it offers no foothold in a familiar place. If landscape were ever an appropriate metaphor for the product of a congeries of sounds, it would be applicable h…
Black White And Grey
1992 release ** A complete new work plus 'Death In The Blue Lake'. Combines playing and through-composition with manipulated and environmental sound in dramatic, narrative, psychological constructions. Quite unique. 'Death' based on a novel; texts in new works by Chris Cutler.
The People's Music
With string orchestras, percussion, a motivating red guard and the severed embalmed arm of the great helmsman himself (maybe), Jon Pits the ethos of Mao's China - and in particular the mass production of the violin and it's use in life against the 'reductive cultural practice of our globalised world'. Well, that's what it says here and by golly I agree. Apart from that, this a large scale work that features fine and extensive writing for string orchestras, juxtaposed with (more or less) controll…
Silo
Sound artist Lauren Weinger documents and reworks one of her large scale installation events in giant grain silos in America. The massive sounds of gargantuan hoppers pouring grain, documentary moments of dialogue, local, archive and composed musics, mysterious traces of a country, a culture, an event where 2 Americas meet. Beautiful packing. Plus extra Video track (& software, if required, to play it). A unique document and powerful listening.
Unsounds And Domo Live
Derek Gedalecia’s latest creation brings us mutated electronic music from the extreme far out. A seemingly endless stream of synthetic gurgles, gulping, and goop in chaotic bursts of unpredictability. Includes a live audience/soundboard recording that delivers in the masterful live HB style.
Holding Hands
Julian Gulyas (Cylindrical Habitat Modules label boss) delivers a refreshing suite of synth and tape explorations. Holding Hands references the early days of electronic music, while still maintaining a forward-thinking and modern abstract underground sound.
Fermionit | Kulmamomentti
Mika Vainio was recoording a new Ø-album since 2014. He almost got it ready before his too early passing in 2017. Mika's girlfriend Rikke Lundgreen from Oslo has been going through his notes, numerous versions and takes of the album treacks. Now the collection of the tracks is completed. There were two tracks that Mika thought should not be included the album. They make this release. The shoter track Kulmamomentti is edited slightly longer by Jimi Tenor and Timo Kaukolampi.
A Fantasy In Seasons
Ben Billington’s solo works as Quicksails put him in a place uncharted by many other contemporary acts, combining a wide assortment of live percussion and synthesized electronics. Following up recent cassettes on Digitalis and Deception Island, “A Fantasy In Seasons” recalls moments of Kosmische synth, Free Jazz, world music, and a vast collection of eclectic sounds from this world and elsewhere.
Summer Breeze
Wouter Jaspers returns to Muzan with his long time collaborator and friend Steffan de Turck as Preliminary Saturation. Summer Breeze is an ambient-noise album that lives up to its name for just how pleasurable it is to listen to. The music box melody that provides the main theme for “across the floor” functions as a soft counterpoint to the noises and drones that pulse and slide beneath it, evoking images of sunlight and slow stretching shadows. “the house next door” strikes a darker, more myste…
Дао Нас
Mysterious tape from Gas28a on Ikuisuus.
"Tao acts without activity or intention,things come from it and receive order.The Tao that can be followed is not the eternal Tao.The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.The name that can be named is not the eternal name.The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth."
For Beniko
Closing our unoficial New Weird Portugal tape batch on Sucata Tapes is Eosin aka Diana Combo with a mixtape of crackling and droney vinyl mixed with Field recordings recorded outdoors on a later summer afternoon in Alentejo. In Diana’s own words: ”This piece was made during a residency in Elvas (Alentejo, Portugal), in the context of the first edition of the festival A Salto, in July 2016. Each one of the invited artists for this residency was given a specific place where to develop a work to be…