Ha Ha Laughing Record
James Twig Harper Johnston's tribute to the legendary Okeh laughing record. (if ya don't know...look it up!) It's funny (pun intended), I get a message from Harper saying he's working on a "Laughing Record" lathe... I'm like.. "Woah, I was just working on some "giggle loops" myself... I'll send em over!", "Perfect!" . A few more giggles from our friend Nora and he's in monkey business! He mixes those w/ some classic canned laugh tracks and sends em thru his new computerized "Anti-System" and get…
Sunburned Dreamlike Safari
A floating drift toward a mysterious reality, between Nature and Cosmos, poised between sleep and wakefulness, temporal co-presences and impossible spatial ubiquities. In this phantasmagorical saga, inspired by TV science-fiction as well as 60s and 70s horror movies, Nicola Giunta/Lay Llamas creates a miraculous balance between original inserts and retrievals of freely chosen fragments from old audio documentaries on vinyl, perfecting the art of sound collage in an absolutely psychedelic way. No…
Inverted Summer
*2024 stock. 300 copies limited release* Inverted Summer is the full-length vinyl LP debut of Eric Hardiman's (Century Plants/Burnt Hills) solo project. As Rambutan, Hardiman has released a steady stream of quality material on a variety of underground labels since 2007. Subtly bridging realms of noise, dub, psych, drone, minimalism, and musique concrete, Rambutan brings listeners into a unique sonic headspace that finds common ground between bliss and dread. Utilizing various electronics, synthe…
That's Understanding
Having listened to this disk 20 or so times over the past week, I have been struck time and again by the gently naif quality of Dan Beckman-Moon's songwriting. I keep thinking of Neil Young's earliest solo tunes, particularly 'Sugar Mountain,' as a sort of spiritual touchstone, although truthfully the music doesn't really sound anything like that. Still, the emotional core of the material has a similar sweetness and simplicity, while managing to steer clear of mawkishness with a nimble delicacy …
Shamanic Twilight
2024 stock. Liholesie is a sophisticated Russian ethnic-ambient act, whose first demo was released back in 2002. From 2004 to 2008, Liholesie released four albums and a split with several metal bands. The project's music underwent changes from epic folk ambience to a more ritual atmosphere, so Liholesie became one of the most famous Russian ambient projects, whose audience included the fans of different styles, from black metal to neofolk. Then there was a period of silence, which ended only in…
The Ascending Scale
*350 copies limited edition.* 2024 stock.Nick Parkin and Z’ev were introduced to each other by Charles Powne of Soleilmoon Recordings at a social get together in London in 2005. The following year they ran into each other again at the ICA’s Sonic Arts Festival, and after a series of meetings and conversations realised they had a number of common sonic and philosophical threads, and decided to try recording together. The two musicians shared an interest in site-specific recordings and the atmosph…
Psychoacoustic Electronics
Tip! *300 copies limited edition* Andy Ortmann owns Nihilist Records, of whom we also reviewed The New Blockaders and Diana Rogerson's works last week. And before I say anything about the music on this album, I would love to show you a bit of the inside of my head. Because when I read the title of this impressive triple vinyl totalling over two hours of music, I was thinking about something completely different. So: What is psychoacoustic music, and how do psychoacoustic electronics fit into the…
Walnut Instrument / Ballet For Skeptics
*80 copies limited edition.* Kult Masek is moniker for Michael Nechvátal, who is long time alam of Stoned to Death. His new album Walnut Instrument / Ballet for Skeptics is his first release for the label under Kult Masek, but he has made quite a humongous mark on the labels catalog already - namely with his other projects such as Jasnovidec, Raw Deal or M-N. In his latest two compositions Nechvátal further explores possibilities of his modular synthesizer. His main source of inspiration and sou…
BO
*120 copies limited edition.* "I'm on a jet ski. The river I'm on is dirty. Not like it was clean before, but there was some rain up north and now the mud got in the stream. Bunch of birds are hanging out on the piece of driftwood. The splash of dirty water from jet ski disturbs them from their limbo. They fly away, they squeal with displeasure. This river is all mine. Rain starts pouring. Jet ski is on full speed now, spitting the brown mud water out. Sound of a collapsing engine brings the jet…
Air II - Travelling Without Moving
The second volume of the Air series is even more abstract, stringing together eleven untitled chapters in a zero gravity journey aptly dubbed “Traveling Without Moving: The Trip.” The album lives up to that loose aforementioned tagline, imagining an ever-elusive search for meaning in the interzone Namlook never really abandoned. A lot of live recorded percussion in conjunction with environmental sounds is giving this album a more human touch. Over 60 minutes in one go, eleven "trips" on this wor…
The Closest Thing to Silence
In August 2022 the Australia-based, French born new age musician and electronic music composer Ariel Kalma was invited to participate in BBC Radio 3’s Late Junction series of special collaborations. The program pairs artists who have not previously worked together to create new music cooperatively. Kalma was quick to suggest working with two musicians whom he had never met – International Anthem recording artists Jeremiah Chiu & Marta Sofia Honer, whose critically-acclaimed duo debut Recordings …
Biarrezgaur
*300 copies limited release* Biarrezgaur (not tomorrow, today) is a blissful and misty set of guitar tones entangled with effects and reverberation. Dreamy and reflective proto-blues-folk sketches that suggest a sense of matured serenity that only comes with years of practice. Spontaneous, gentle and free-flowing in equal parts, Biarrezgaur is a perfect autumnal recipe for those looking in the direction of Six Organs of Admittance, Loren Connors with Alan Licht, or even Robbie Basho or Albert Gi…
Sprecato
First album in seven years from Maple Death Records founder James Jonathan Clancy (Italy/Canada), and the first under his birth name following previous ensembles His Clancyness (Fat Cat, Maple Death) and Brutal Birthday (Total Punk, Improved Sequence). In the interim between those projects and this latest, ‘Sprecato’, Clancy has refined and honed his vision —steadily and carefully drawing from a host of disparate influences to create a new kind of singer-songwriter album that bridges the divide …
Vibrações de Prata
This is a presentation of Xexa's different sensibilities as a composer, musician and sound designer, mapping what are in effect her initial explorations with voice, rhythms, synths, ambience, ever searching for an organic final result. As a student at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama (London) between 2019 and a still fresh 2023, she presented in her third year a portfolio that included what we can now listen as "Clarinet Mood", the final track on "Vibrações De Prata". Her intention was to…
Windshift
Michael Atherton is a writer, composer and educator from Sydney, Australia. Originally born in Liverpool, England, to Welsh-Irish and German parents, his family later migrated to Australia in 1965. Moving to the suburbs in La Perouse, he grew up in a mixed, multicultural community, where he fostered friendships with existing indigenous members and Iberian migrants. His formative migrant experience and his curiosity about vernacular, as well as notated music, led him to study music formally where…
Overcloseness
Started around a decade ago, "Overcloseness" has been a long time coming. It is Colorist's debut album on paper, but already has a magnum opus feel to it. The beginnings of Colorist lay in the Cologne music community. Being small, it was always influenced by the art and the film scene. (In fact, the label Magazine originates from the same crossing point.) The large cast of guest appearances underlines how much Antonio de Luca and Caroline Kox are in the center of that Cologne community. On "Over…
Avaler Des Couleuvres
Tip! LP release by Fougère honcho Kévin Orliange. Repetitive music made with tape loops, which tell the bad weather and deep industrial forest of the place where he lives called Le Plateau de Millevaches (who inspired Deuleuze and Guattari's Mille Plateaux).
Meadow Argus II
*2023 stock. 100 copies limited release* "“Warmth and woozies,” that’s what Meadow Argus is made of! Tynan Krakoff of Columbus, OH recently revived that ol’ solo moniker for a followup to his tape from over five years ago. And yeah, there’s already a Meadow Argus III on the way! But today, we’re looking at the Meadow Argus II self-release from back in April. It’s a simple C35 kind of affair; one that is legitimately keeping me on edge as I type this up.
You see, I recently swapped boomboxes and …
Peristera
*2023 stock. 100 copies limited edition* "I’ve been a big fan of Tynan Krakoff’s Meadow Argus project for a while now, but Peristera is my favorite album so far. Dust-covered loops tug at memories buried deep in our subconscious, coaxed out by operatic samples and the increasing glassine electronics. Urgency fights against a current of clanging, broken down chimes and toy piano skeletons. Krakoff has an uncanny ability to push old, broken-down sounds up an ever-rising, the palette continuing to …
For The Birds
*27 copies limited edition* "The newest Meadow Argus tape melds his usual field recordings and tape loops with a particularly soothing set of organ drones, possibly made by a harmonium. The fuzzy organ rolls throughout, and cheerful conversations, birds chirping, and thickets full of insects enter the sound-picture. It’s all a pleasant stroll that gradually gets trippier, as you realize when a crowing bird echoes deep into the ether, and other sounds feel out of balance. The second side gets par…