Decay Music n.8: I Hate All the Words
“I hate all the words” by Luca Scarabelli and Michele Lombardelli’s Untitled Noise, the eight instalments in the celebrated Die Schachtel’s “Decay music” series, is a concept album composed of three tracks designed to explore the remote and hidden depths of psyche: Misery, the awareness; The Time, the suspension of disbelief; and Heaven, the existential atonement through detachment. The sounds and the voice proceed alternately, overlapping, where each, in its progression, asserts itself autonomo…
Hairway To Steven
The second part of Matador’s reissues of the essential early records by Texas’s Butthole Surfers continues with three of their most insane slabs -- 1985’s ‘Cream Corn from the Socket of Davis,’ 1987’s ‘Locust Abortion Technician’ and 1988’s ‘Hairway to Steven.’ The period during which these records were first issued parallels the Buttholes’ transition from being weirdo Texas outcasts to becoming internationally recognized smut-kings of the American underground. In 1985 they were still the sole p…
Difference and Repetition / A Musical Evocation Of Gilles Deleuze
This new album (the tenth in their discography) was born from two ambitions: to pay tribute to Soft Machine's Third on form (4 sides / 4 titles) and to philosopher Gilles Deleuze (Difference and Repetition is the title of his thesis) on the contents. The 4 long pieces of this double concept album were developed over 2 years and each has a different style and climate. Bold and kaleidoscopic, Difference and Repetition perfectly synthesizes the musical and literary obsessions of Palo Alto.
Formed i…
We Will Be Wherever the Fires Are Lit
begin form here...
begin from here...our world lives when their world ceases to existbegin from here...with hopes, between silent skies, while world breathes again and the fever subsidesbegin from here...and to those who strike blowsbegin from here...while we keep goingbegin from here...while we mourn, we also fight
We will be wherever the fires are lit!
We will be wherever the fires are lit, a sort of sequel to Tashi Dorji’s first DC release Stateless, takes the torch and storms forward, with t…
Chita
Tip! *LP ltd to 415, black vinyl, 2 color (blue and black) silkscreened jacket with obi (black or light grey), 2 inserts and a postcard. Printed by Alan Sherry* Chita, the third album proper by Japanese guitar pop trio Usurabi, is their most elegant, stylish confection yet. Over the past four years, Toshimitsu Akiko (vocals, guitar), Kawaguchi Masami (bass) and Morohashi Shigeki (drums) have been recording, playing live, and releasing songs of rare melodic warmth, centring Toshimitsu’s unique mu…
The Academy In Peril
John Cale was never very kind to his solo debut, Vintage Violence. When it was released in early 1970, Cale had been out of The Velvet Underground for less than two years. He wanted to prove he could be the songwriter, the person penning the words and melodies behind which a band could work. “I was masked on Vintage Violence,” he wrote much later. “You’re not really seeing the personality.” Indeed, Cale’s personality as a polyglot seemingly interested in everything emerged more and more on his n…
Paris 1919
** Remastered from the Original Tapes. Deluxe Edition Reissue Sanctioned by John Cale Himself. Includes Previously Unreleased Outtakes & a Brand-New Recording** John Cale was never very kind to his solo debut, Vintage Violence. When it was released in early 1970, Cale had been out of The Velvet Underground for less than two years. He wanted to prove he could be the songwriter, the person penning the words and melodies behind which a band could work. “I was masked on Vintage Violence,” he wrote m…
Inland Empire (Império Interior): A Compendium Of Experimental Music Made In Portugal Vol.3
*2024 stock* Inland Empire (Império Interior), or the last brushstroke in a triptych that gazed at the stars, sowed winds and, finally, sought the geographical limits of a country.
Going over the obvious lynchian reference, the last of Wasser Bassin‘s compendiums dedicated to experimental music produced in Portugal brings to light the electronic abstractions of Caranguejos; the irreverent drones of Ehxispê, creative alter-ego of Rodrigo Vieira; and from the banks of the Côa, instead of rock engr…
The Pastoral Machine
Fourth volume of Library Music miniatures by Daniel O’Sullivan (Ulver, Æthenor, This is Not This Heat, etc) for VHF, this time commissioned by the legendary German Music Library, Sonoton. Another sampling of Dan’s versatility and brilliance as a composer, performer, and sound designer, the focus on The Pastoral Machine is more “electronic” compared to the three previous albums Dan recorded for KPM (also issued on LP by VHF), with simpler arrangements and a focus on gentle and emotive synthesised…
Electric Totems
"Surrealistic games helped us to compose this album: the collective collage in the two longest pieces of the album, the exquisite corpse in the central short pieces, and in all, the automatic writing whose musical equivalent could well be free improvisation.
In the scorching heat of a Valencian August, we raised two electric totem poles. Dr Truna's took the form of his cosmic bull, a great roaring and improvising sculpture; mine, equipped with blowers, was made for the occasion and then dismantl…
Martina Verhoeven Invites
*300 copies limited edition* "Martina Verhoeven is a Flemish pianist who likes to seek musical adventure, in different line-ups. The album Martina Verhoeven Invites contains two sessions recorded at Cafe Oto in London on July 23, 2023. During the concert, Gina Southgate made the painting that appears on the cover of the sleeve, which manages to capture the action of the musicians perfectly, as far as I am concerned - lots of color, lots of movement, and a special way of playing together. Two lon…
Bleed
Back in full force, Northern Spy returns with what might just be the best record we’ve heard all year: The Necks’ “Bleed”. A creatively visionary and astounding immersion into the band’s singular realm of sonority, unfolding at a glacial pace over the 42-minute composition’s duration, these two vinyl sides comprise some of the most tense and ambitious moments we’ve ever heard from one of the most important bands working today.
New Moon In The Evil Age
Hugely influential and appearing nearly everywhere within Washington D.C.'s contemporary music scene as bandleaders and contributing artistic voices, cellist and vocalist Janel Leppin and guitarist Anthony Pirog have long been creative partners as well as life partners. Their Cuneiform Records debut Where is Home (2012) is considered a crucial modern recording from the region. Following that release, the two have crafted a double-LP opus which crosses genres and mirrors their exploratory and dia…
Jinxed By Being
What might appear to be the most unlikely collaboration of 2024 proves also to be one of the most invigorating listens of the year! Shackleton & Six Organs of Admittance are in full aural/metaphysical alignment in their mutual effort to become Jinxed by Being. On first listen, it becomes immediately clear that this fusion of Shackleton's bass-heavy cosmic dread and Six Organs' ritual folksong makes total sense. Longtime listeners know that both Shackleton and Six Organs of Admittance have been u…
Modfase
Crumbling tape loops, broken glass sounds, micro-cassette feedback and songs for piano, voice and guitar sit side by side on this uniquely tender release by Danish artist Franciska. Submitted to the label on a cassette sent via mail with typewritten credits, 'Modfase' is masterfully restrained, constructed with a care and gentleness that's hard to find in today's "ambient" and "experimental" music circles. Each side contains multiple pieces which quickly shift between musique concrete, tape musi…
Varder 1
Big Tip! Varder is a new LP-series dedicated to unearthing early Norwegian electronic music. When this new form of music began to spread in the 1950s, it required large studios with expensive equipment, and the outcome was often considered not commercial enough for record labels to venture into. But despite the meagre means, Norwegian composers threw themselves into new sonic adventures such as electroacoustics, musique concrète and computer music, travelling to studios in Norway, Sweden, Poland…
Potapanje Brodova
The Croatian experimental virtuoso releases an album of reworks from a rusting usb stick residing at Rijeka's museum of modern art.
Push Comes To Love
Reknowned modern artist and Krayola kollaborator delivers a soundtrack for every man: love, sex, death, and sweet sweet pop music.
Stratégies Obliques II
Tip! *200 copies limited edition* Latest split from Coppice and Toy Bizarre on Ferns Recordings.
Spoors
Some changes from Volume One. These are Instrumental pieces, and the band is now a quartet. Stevan Kovacs Tickmayer, Bob Drake and Chris Cutler are joined by guitarist Mike Johnson of Thinking Plague. The music remains somewhere between intense contemporary complexity and rock - passing most points between. Tickmayer's compositional language is....unique and complex and extremely broad - no influence is seemingly outlawed, and this makes for a genuinely unclassifiable form that resembles nothing…