After Its Own Death / Walking in a Spiral
**CD Edition** Grouper’s Liz Harris quietly released this album of primordial soundscapes a few weeks ago under the new Nivhek alias, initially released in a private edition that vanished almost as quickly as it was announced, After its own death / Walking in a spiral towards the house is presented here in a beautiful second edition on Superior Viaduct's imprint W.25TH.** Opaque assemblages of Mellotron, guitar, field recordings, tapes and broken FX pedals by Pacific Northwest artist Liz Harris,…
Invocations of Almost
**LP version on ivory vinyl** Current 93 have dreamt a new album, Invocations of Almost, using music from her FuturePast and her PastFuture, to accompany David Tibet's art exhibition, Invocations of Almost, which opened on March 9 at The Begovich Gallery in Fullerton, CA and lasted for around two months. The CD version is 59 minutes long, as it is launched on David's 59th birthday, March 5, whilst he was in LA for the official opening of his show. The music on Invocations of Almost was played on…
Make We Here Our Camp of Winter
**200 copies on heavyweight clear vinyl, silk-screened artwork** Dauw welcome the Helsinki based band The Gentleman Losers to the label for a vinyl issue of Make We Here Our Camp of Winter which was initially released late 2018 on Sound in Silence. Make We Here Our Camp of Winter is The Gentleman Losers’ fourth full-length album, featuring eight new compositions, most part of which was written during the summer of 2018 at a cabin by a lake in southern Finland. All in all, this is a much more spo…
Piano Music
Two short pieces built from piano recordings made by Orphax at De Ruimte in Amsterdam Noord during summer 2017. The 7-inch marks a deliberate break with his usual drone vocabulary, foregrounding more openly melodic ambient writing and treating the piano as the primary voice rather than as raw material. One of his most personal works to date, dealing in textural terms with closure, regret and the slow effort of moving on.
Chronos
On C.h.r.o.n.o.s., their third album on Karlrecords, Arovane and Porya Hatami deliver five delicate ambient pieces, rich in textures and Zen-like atmospheres. After Organism (2017) and the musique concrete influenced Organism_evolution (2018), Uwe Zahn alias Arovane and Porya Hatami continue their sonic explorations with C.h.r.o.n.o.s, the fifth collaboration album by the German electronic producer and the Iranian sound artist. While the duo's last album was a collection of 23 mostly short track…
Meaning Turns To Whispers
Ian William Craig, the trained opera singer and painter from Vancouver, continues to establish himself as one of the most original voices in ambient and experimental music. Following the global acclaim of his debut A Turn Of Breath (2014) and Cradle For The Wanting (2015), Craig presents Meaning Turns To Whispers, an album that marked his philosophical shift from wanting to express to simply wanting to explore.
Meaning Turns To Whispers combines piano improvisations with FM feedback loops, recor…
Fauna
Finally restocked: Tsembla's outstanding faux-gamelan and homemade ethnodelic fantasies from Finland’s Ikuisuus label "The cicadas rub their legs, singing as if sucking on inhalators, when past the great willows I see a dam resting deep in the shelter of the trees. The shadow of the dam, a dark cloak glowing green, spreads over the branches of the trees and far across the grass, transforming the yard beyond the road’s edge into an odd province ruled by frogs and mosquitoes that gradually slides …
Gmaj7
300 copies. Epic guitar drones and roiling, focussed post-rock minimalism for fans of Stephen O'Malley, Oren Ambarchi. Hand-numbered edition limited to 300 in hand-screened jacket with download coupon redeemable from the label. About Gmaj7: This G rooted nondominant seventh chord presents itself as a major/major seventh consisting of root (G), major third (B), perfect fifth (D), and major seventh (F#). The appearance of movement is created here by emphasizing different dials present in various v…
Molen
Circle Bros is the longrunning onemanproject of Wim Lecluyse (founder of Morc Records). What started out as a way to experiment with sounds and recording techniques, evolved throughout the years into a more song-oriented outfit. The roots are to be found in the world of drone, lo-fi and improvisation, which results in songs that are half improvised, and therefore have a more spontaneous structure. A sort of singer-songimprovisation for those that prefer soundexperiments over traditional verse/ch…
Plight & Premonition Flux & Mutability
Four beautiful, exceptional ambient nocturnes bloom again on a very welcome 30th anniversary reissue, newly packaged together by Grönland for the benefit of your health... David Sylvian and Holger Czukay’s Plight + Premonition [1988] & Flux + Mutability [1989] bouquets remain some of the most enigmatic ambient recordings of the ‘80s since their conception at Czukay’s converted cinema studio in Köln, 1986. But, while Sylvian was ostensibly coming to record vocals for the last track on Czukay’s Ro…
Animal Wrath
Phil Maggi is a composer, a vocalist and a film maker from Belgium. Known as the lead singer of heavy-rock combo Ultraphallus, Phil Maggi develops an extensive body of work as a solo musician for several years. This new album Animal Wrath is a combination of his different forms of music, from ambient-drone, electro-acoustic, sampling and field recordings to free-jazz. Phil Maggi has invited a few generous collaborators (Oren Bloedow, Maja Jantar, Radwan Ghazi Moumneh,Tom Malmendier, Gabriel Séve…
N 4
Christina Vantzou follows her role in the superb CV & JAB album for Shelter Press with the starkly haunting No.4 in her chrono-numeric series of albums for Kranky. No. 4 took shape across roughly two years, incorporating a diverse array of musical and conceptual collaborators, including fellow Kranky artists Steve Hauschildt and John Also Bennett (of Forma) as well as Angel Deradoorian (ex-Dirty Projectors), Clarice Jensen, Beatrijs De Klerck and members of Belgium’s Echo Collective. During the …
Interventions In A Landscape
Cinema Perdu is Martijn Pieck's solo vehicle for what he calls 'soundtracks without movies': field recording as compositional starting point, layered with synthesizers, contact-microphone material and other electronic sources to reconstitute the feeling of a place at a moment. Interventions in a Landscape unfolds across four pieces drawn from coastal sites where human modification of the terrain sharpens existing contrasts. Place-based composition on the musique concrète-ambient threshold.
Amazonia 6891: Sounds From Jungle, Natural Objects, Echo ...
Fantastic! This is one of the best long-lost treasure from the 80s – and it's one long composition filled with raw sounds from the jungle, natural objects and electronic treatment. The idea to evoke a deep journey in the Amazon rainforest has affected various musicians in the history of popular and experimental music, but comparing to other works this rare Amazonia 6891, released only on cassette in 1986, appears as totally original and extreme in his conception. Here, the interest in eth…
Further West Quad Cult LP
Prefigured by the inclusion of a secret extra pocket in the original packaging of Far West (IMPREC 386CD/LP, 2013), this painstakingly crafted complimentary LP is intended for synced playback with that release. With two turntables or other playback devices, the listener can experience fully unique quad playback. Further West Quad Cult LP offers deeper journeys into the cave where the self dissolves. It also stands alone as an inverted Far West universe, and the listener is invited to enjoy it…
Fruhruin
Asmus Tietchens and Thomas Köner exercise a collective marketing genius with their decision to end a fruitful collaborative series in brute, anticlimactic style, issuing this limited, (naturally) expensive box meant to house the duo's previous four discs. Such closure is especially disappointing as it arrives just behind last year's n, Kontakt der Jünglinge's most dense and engrossing work to date, a haunting deepspace symphony of icy gleam and relentless sprawl, one of my late-year favorites. F…
Before And After Science
Completing the essential quartet of Brian Eno's early vocal albums is 1977's Before and After Science. The first half is vibrant, rhythmically complex songs (No One Receiving, Kings Lead Hat etc) before slipping into gentle relective moods for the second half. Cluster's Moebius and Roedelius, Can's Jaki Liebezeit, Phil Collins, Robert Fripp, Fred Frith, Fairport's Dave Mattacks, Phil Manzanera etc are amongst the players.
Mangala
Pekka Airaksinen’s Mangala is a landmark album blending experimental electronic and jazz influences, originally composed in 1986, recorded in 1998, and remixed for its 2015 reissue. The LP features five expansive works, including the title track Mangala, which Airaksinen described as capturing moods reminiscent of Miles Davis and Urban Sax at the Pori Jazz Festival. The album’s soundworld is complex, timeless, and immersive, with King of Snakes symbolizing the force that overcomes evil. This rel…
Ceremonies Of Memory I & II
Recorded in January of 1996 in a ravine in Seattle next to the house of Jim Woodring for a proposed and unrealized collaboration with this visual artist.
Jedwabnik
More music involving the seemingly always-at-work Wojciech Kucharczyk (does the man ever sleep?), this time in a quartet alongside B a ej Król, Jerzy Mazzoll and Radek Dziubek. The project's title Dwutysi czny translates as 'two thousand' - referring, according to a brief recent interview with Easterndaze, to the year when Król first came across the music of the other three players, a discovery that eventually led him to write to them to ask if they'd donate him some of their recorded sounds to …