Arc of Day
The bones of a bird, stripped of flesh and feather, give no sign of the heights and depths a living bird can reach, the lengths it can travel, or the songs it can sing. The same is true of the bones of the human hand. For all their strength and delicacy, seeing them skeletal and stark obscures our knowledge of the rhythmic energy with which they engage space, the burdens they can bear, the music they can produce. Yet, in both bird and hand, the foundation of grace and motion remain. Music above …
Bronze
*2023 repress* A giant step from abrasive pastoral into amped-up avant-folk. Hypnotic interludes, ranging from archaic, electrified stomps to enraptured harp and guitar duets, industrial spaces and fragile, ghostly vocal choruses, represent important development as well as a singular musical expression from one of Britain’s most unusual outfits. Mastered for its CD debut by Jim O’Rourke.
II (LP)
From the London based imprint, Hegoa, comes one of the most beautiful and striking records we've heard all year, the Basque trio, Carcáscara’s second outing “II”. Issued in a very limited vinyl edition of 300 copies, its elegant arrangements of tonality, texture, and cascading arpeggiations and drones, sculpt a stunning, acoustic middle ground between a number of Spanish folk traditions, American primitivism, and musical minimalism. A likely strong contender for more than a few year-end lists.
The Daughter's Union
*250 copies limited edition* "Recorded a bit before the last Big Blood slab we released -- Operate Spaceship Earth Properly (FTR 385CD/LP, 2018) -- The Daughter's Union represents the true introduction of Caleb and Colleen's daughter, Quinnisa as a full member of Big Blood. The Maine based duo had been using Quinnisa as their secret hard rock weapon for quite a while, so it is gratifying as heck to see her finally get her due! In their new fully-fledges trio guise, Big Blood puff themselves up l…
Bocca D'ombra
"We entered the shadowy mouth of a new space, descending into a realm that precedes the underworld, the arcane, far from our time. We met beasts that gave us lessons about their language, which we started learning without grammar."
Calisthenics
Calisthenics is the first album by Institute for Certified Nomadic Illicit Sonic Practices (ICNISP), the Berlin-based duo of Brazilian musicians Marina Cyrino (flute) and Matthias Koole (el.guitar). With a mixture of electronic and acoustic sound sources, objects and preparations, inside amplification and no-input mixing, the duo leads guitar and flute towards a common hybrid terrain. Partly inspired by drawings of the Handbook of Calisthenics and Gymnastics: A Complete Drill-book with Music to …
L'Herbe de Détourne
Tip! French folk experimentalist Ernest Bergez has spent several years bringing his signature, singular sound to life in solo mode. At the same time, and despite this individualist streak, he’s a musician with a deep appreciation for communal exchange and collaboration. It’s with this in mind that L’herbe de détourne, Bergez’s latest album, sees him expand his most prominent project Sourdure from a one-man band into a four-person force, and modify the name. Say hello to Sourdurent…
Bergez first …
Où Les Observer, Savoir Les Reconnaître
Vocalized electronics & intellectual kicks. Cervicals are shaking, neurons are chatting. Hello and thank you experimental France. The Americans envy us for having them. Decadent improvisations & raw virtuosity since 2006. 1803 concerts to their credit. 732,715 kilometers of road covered. A buttock forever and ever in the underground charts. Another one shamelessly coveting the MTV Music Award 2037. That's all, yeah.France Sauvage was banned from playing even before starting in the basement of th…
Udge
Melbourne-based Francis Plagne returns to Horn of Plenty with possibly his strongest statement to date, Udge.
Avoidance Language
*2023 stock* "There have been some very cool guitar duo LPs over the years -- Bert Jansch & John Renbourn's Bert & John, Danny Kalb & Stefan Grossman's Crosscurrents, Jody Harris & Robert Quine's Escape, Charalambides' Joy Shapes, Bill Orcutt & Michael Morley's Electric Guitar Duets, any comp of Kansas Joe McCoy & Memphis Minnie, etc. -- but there has never been one quite like Avoidance Language. It is a wild-eyed classic from start to finish. Ostensibly a meeting between two guitarists lurking …
You Can Can
You Can Can is an echoed affirmation, an album which traces song forms around silence, field recordings, and degraded analog memories. This is folk music transmogrified and mutated, as if recorded and reconstructed in Pierre Schaffer’s GRM studio.
Hosono House
*2023 stock* The unbelievably prolific Haruomi Hosono is one of the major architects of modern Japanese pop music. With his encyclopedic knowledge of music and boundless curiosity for new sounds, Hosono has put his unmistakable stamp on hundreds of recordings as a session player, producer, and auteur of his own idiosyncratic musical world. Born and raised in central Tokyo, his adolescent obsession with American pop culture informed his early forays into country music, which he would revisit late…
Absolut Gehör
*321 copies limited edition. In process of stocking. 2023 stock* Origami Arktika is one of Norway’s best kept secrets. They serve a mutated folk music, rooted in the county of Telemark, interspaced with drones, noise, electronica and undefinable elements. They mix the archaic with the modern. Paper folding with frozen fingers.
"People forget that noise music is just as much grounded in subtlety and elusive sophistications as in deafening roars and colliding atonalities. I cite Morphogenesis' fi…
Grenselos
*200 copies limited edition. In process of stocking* Origami Arktika is one of Norway’s best kept secrets. They serve a mutated folk music, rooted in the county of Telemark, interspaced with drones, noise, electronica and undefinable elements. They mix the archaic with the modern. Paper folding with frozen fingers.
OA moves along the axis of time by using Old Norwegian folk songs and folklore, combined with modern inspiration and technology. OA is a knotty time machine, hotwired by haystack-pol…
The Grove
Big Blood are Colleen Kinsella and Caleb Mulkerin who live in South Portland, Maine, where they make and record experimental music at home. They have made twenty-something records since 2006. The music is a vehicle for dealing with what is going on in their heads, which runs the gamut from friends they have lost, to frustrations during the day, and the larger world picture. Without sounding insincere, they make music for themselves, that at times can be wildly inconsistent.
In 2007, they releas…
Its Own Phantom
Tip! Edition of 100 copies, with risograph printed j card "Five years after the magnificent Valosta Valoon LP (FTR 331LP, 2017), Finnish multi-instrumentalist, Niko Karlsson is back with a new swab of sound that is even more organic than its predecessor. This time out the focus is more on acoustic strings and percussion, with a minimum of machine-driven sounds, even when things get cinematically tense (especially on the B-side). But the bulk of Niko's new tape (which he had first suggested be re…
The Sounds of VÖ
From the opening seconds it’s clear that the debut recording of the improvising sextet VÖ is not just another free improv session. The deeply meditative sounds may conjure disparate folk traditions from around the globe, whether Scandinavian fiddle tunes or the way Alex Zethson’s meandering pump organ evokes the exploratory harmonium lines in Pakistani qawwali music, but these associations are mostly coincidental. The ensemble members are devoted to improvised and experimental music mostly as an…
Le Macerie Di Babilonia
* Limited edition of 300 copies * sferic mark 5 years of influential operations with a special deep dive into ancient/modern Mediteranean culture by Giovanni Napolano, who’s usually known for crankier industro-dancehall output as NPLGNN (Reel Torque, Youth) and programming the wonderful MBE label - a proper RIYL Jay Glass Dubs, Christos Chondropoulos, Alan Lomax, DJ Screw, Coda Lunga.Taking his native Naples, Italy as a locus of Med culture, Napolano plunges the port city’s palimpsest of energie…
Landscape Man
*Limited edition of 200 copies.* Robert Desnos dreamed: I saw Davey Williams and Johnny Shines playing dice with Fred Lane; Isaiah Owens and Andrei Tarkovsky witnessing to a UAB anthropology graduate student; at one point Diogenes the Cynic leaned his head in the door, then moved on. Fred Shuttlesworth, trumpet in hand, kept shouting, “Where’s the one? Where’s the one” Thomas Blanton, Robert Chambliss, and Bobby Cherry, dressed in immaculate white Sufi gowns, whirling and whirling and whirling. …
Froggy’s
*In process of stocking. Limited edition of 500 copies* Pleased to announce that after two years as a digital only release Little Wings' Froggy's is now available on vinyl!! We've been fans of Little Wings for 20 years now so to be able to release a new record from the brilliantly prolific Kyle Field is a dream come true! Not to mention Froggy's is one of the weirder and most amazing Little Wings albums we've heard and we're thrilled to have it here on Astral Editions. Based on a now defunct res…