Hymns from the Harbour
**Edition of 118 numbered audiophile golden CD** Best known as producer and mainman behind Dark Companion Records and the reborn Manticore Records, Max Marchini gives birth to his first solo album where he plays all instruments except for two collaborations with avant-garde singer songwriter Paola Tagliaferro and the amazing pakhawaj indian drum playing of Akhilesh Gundecha. This album was intended as a present for his friends for Dark Companion’s 5th anniversary, but eventually label insisted t…
Fragile
**2021 Stock** The rarest, and I would dare to say best, folk/psych album from Peter Howell and John Ferdinando, musical brainchildren behind Ithaca, Agincourt, Alice Through the Looking Glass, and Tomorrow Come Someday. This fifth Howell/Ferdinando album had just been completed in or around 1974 when the partnership came to an end. Howell had been working at the BBC as a studio manager since 1970 (he’d provided a stiff upper lip voiceover for John Peels Top Gear shows), but he was now offered a…
Para Castukis
* 2021 Stock * Here at last is a chance to discover why people have been willing to pay a very steep price to hear Sandhy & Mandhy, the duo who were not a duo, the band who were not a band, creators of perhaps the rarest and most expensive album from Argentina. To tell the story of Sandhy & Mandhy, we have to go back to 1967, when Alberto Infusino (Sandhy) and Alberto Vanasco (Mandhy) began their musical partnership in the beat band The New Free Men. Like many bands of that time, Los Shaker’s an…
Ptarmigan
* Edition of 300. Rated by many as the best “folk/progressive” and/or “folk/psych” album ever made. Sourced from the master tapes. Huge insert comes with lyrics, liner notes from the band, and more * Hypnotic, mystical, largely instrumental tracks, all based on a complex interplay of recorder, hand drums and acoustic guitar—one of those hidden gems that make life better when you discover them all these years later. Ptarmigan recorded the basic tracks for what would eventually become their only a…
Michael Oosten
Keeping a band together was difficult in the late 1960’s. Tough too, because Michael Oosten was writing songs that veered away from pop-song structures. There was also the relative ease and lack of responsibility required for hauling around a guitar. So, Oosten took off, with a Martin guitar in tow, playing coffeehouses and clubs across the country. By the end of 1973, he was ready to record an LP—five psychedelic folk/rock tracks, ranging from the brightly smiling ‘Sunny Day’ to the epic ‘Hungr…
Wa
* 2021 Stock * Musician, composer and one of the most revered figures for today’s younger generation of experimental and alternative Arabic music-scenes, Kamilya Jubran (text, oud & vocals, collaborates with long standing musical partner, composer, accomplished trumpet player and seasoned electronic musician Werner Hasler (trumpet & electronics).
In Wa (Arabic for and), their third album together as a duo, Kamilya Jubran and Werner Hasler continue to interrogate their listening and their express…
Vol. 9 After the Circle
Outsider Portuguese artist Filipe Felizardo delivers a singular album of 21stcentury loner folk from the confines of his apartment. Performed, recorded and mixed at home over the course of two days during the Summer of 2019, the music captured on this record resonates now more than ever to our current housebound times. Construction site noises, leaking sinks, random conversations, cat meows and guitar strums all interact with each other in this origami field recording from the interiors of one’s…
The Sound of Indifference
**300 copies** Minimal Wave is proud to present The Sound of Indifference, a rare cassette released in 1981 by Aural Indifference. Aural Indifference was a post-punk studio collective from Sydney, Australia. The two principal members were Brian Spencer Hall (the M Squared in house producer) and Kevin Purdy. The cassette album, The Sound of Indifference, was released in 1981, featuring tracks such as “Theme”, “Park, and “Man Am I Progressive”. Their sound ranges from minimal synth, to post-punk t…
Negoum
The music on this album was recorded in the studio the day after Frances-Marie Uitti and Ayman Fanous spent ten minutes improvising together in concert, in a first meeting. It represents bidirectional ideas in music often and erroneously thought to be opposites: western vs. eastern, improvised vs. through-composed. In this recording they are stood on their head, examined, dissected, tortured, and ultimately reconciled. Fanous says: “Musically, Frances and I came from two distinct sets of emphase…
Robot Brujo
In the wild and tangled web of sound that makes up contemporary experimental music, it can be hard to see up from down. Beyond all their obvious tasks, record labels double as a crucial lens. Ears to the ground, they build context and understanding for the disparate elements of this sonic world. Among the most notable of these, looking beyond the well trodden path, is Hands In The Dark.Over the last decade, they’ve become an unmissable force, bringing visionary and unexpected projects into focus…
Ka:mos
Kɑːmos is the duo of Aino Peltomaa and Nathan Wouters. Aino Peltomaa (FIN) is a vocalist with a radiating sound. She performs widely with medieval, renaissance and contemporary music. In 2018, she directed and performed Ordo Virtutum by Hildegard von Bingen with the Finnish Kaari Ensemble. This medieval, mystic nun keeps on intriguing: her songs are also part of Aino’s project Harmony of the Spheres and her words are sometimes used in the lyrics of Kɑːmos.Nathan Wouters (BE) plays the bass as if…
D-A-D
Maybe it’s too much to ask for a moment of your attention. As we grow older and keep diving into this era of information, disinformation, fake news and all that, we also tend to take a step back and listen to the intents of those social media adverts that tell us to slow down, breathe in, breathe out, enjoy everything around you a little bit. So, if it’s not too much to ask, you can press play and start enjoying D-A-D. If you’re doing that, you can even stop reading this, because you don’t need …
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…
A Journey
Black Editions present the first ever vinyl release of Ché-SHIZU's signature album A Journey, originally issued in 1994 by Tokyo's legendary P.S.F. Records. Ché-SHIZU is one of the most original and mystifying groups to ever emerge from the Tokyo underground. Founded by master improviser Chie Mukai in 1981 the group has been guided by her singular vision for nearly 40 years. Throughout its history Ché-SHIZU has challenged traditional notions of song structure and improvisation. Mukai's signature…
S'Û
An amazing record. It’s beautifully recorded and almost impossible to believe that such a layered and polyphonic music, with chords, percussion, lead lines, bass lines, harmonies, string sections and sometimes voice could all be produced by one person in real time, without overdubs or loops. But it is. The instrument, a specially designed and augmented Sardinian guitar (almost the size of a cello) is equipped with motors, pedals, individual string mic’ing, and extra appendages; and of course the…
Ubique
Last copies! ** Edition of 250 copies in incredible diorama-style hand-made sleeve. **One more top mysterious trace from the Little Skull legacy: Dean Brown's album Ubique (i.e. "everywhere" in Latin) marks the passing of time and people. This sense of loss is very present though the whole record; not getting around to saying the things we meant to say and making sense of the leftovers. Screaming calmly, Dean Brown's Little Skull has shrunk, even more, until his head is almost just sore meat - t…
Divers
The dreamer dreams again with her 4th album of otherworldly microcosms, 'Divers', recorded by Steve Albini and featuring contributions by Nico Muhly and The City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra, arriving five years since her last opus for Drag City. Still possessed by a voice that teeters between sublime and ridiculous (I honestly laughed out loud at the first song), Joanna Newsom remains a precious spirit within the indie folk paradigm, blessed with an air of stately patience and poised, imma…
Matricaria
Tara Burke (FURSAXA) & cellist Helena Espvall (ESPERS). A beautiful, laboriously created, floating affair of skeletal organ drones, ceremonial singing, & subtly frantic instrumental accompaniment that conjures up a natural woodland romp & stomp.
Autumn Testament
2007 release ** "Comprised of Brad Rose (The North Sea) and Keith Wood (Hush Arbors), The Golden Oaks features road show magicians springing forth candles from wooded sanctuaries. Composed via the postal system, Autumn Testament is a hymn to the season of red, gold, and orange. A canopyn of leaves shelters the proceedings from the fog that threatens to obscure these sounds. This is a glorious combination of organic grace, blessed by the forests of past centuries and those still in their infant s…
Cosmic Continuum
Elektronavn AKA Magnus Olsen Majmon is a Danish sound sculptor that shapes a claustrophobic, almost physical experience with haunting drones constructed from an arsenal of instruments such as clarinet, distorted voice, guitar, organ, flute, gong, harp, field recordings and percussion. The music is pretty much impossible to lump into any particular genre but there is a significant folk vibe that runs through a lot of the music, even the more experimental and psychedelic parts. This might have som…