Japalm
Huge Tip! 200 copies. Japalm is a place in a vague geography, a place of memory and an abyss, fantasies and melancholies that take the names of imaginary cities. Loops, aleatory rhythms, the nostalgia of oniric places traced on an perpetual changing map, an image consumed by sunlight: LF RDamb, Dcramb, Nosun, Chllamb, Mneist, Niobu. Japalm is the second record from Hampar Soum, as well as the duo second work with Matteo Castro's label, Second Sleep. Hampar Soum are Stefano Scattolin and Guido Mo…
Ghosted II
In 2021, Oren Ambarchi, Johan Berthling and Andreas Werliin convened in Stockholm’s Studio Rymden to bring forth several monstrously hypnotic improvisations, ultimately bearing their debut: 2022’s widely-acclaimed Ghosted. Two years on, Drag City is now pleased to announce the release of Ghosted II, out on April 26, 2024. Here, Oren, Johan and Andreas have crafted a follow-up record that fuels a rock-solid foundation with years of performing live together as a trio: a fulmination of propelling g…
Rituals
‘Rituals’ is the new album of spiralling drone & ambient formations by Italian artist Danilo Betti aka April Clocks (Union Editions / Mixed Up); a masterwork of sublime disorientation by the Rimini-based outlier, arising from a period of reinvigorated artistic practice. Emerging just over a year after the project’s second album ‘It Takes Time’, ‘Rituals’ heads deeper into spheres of consuming, hypnagogic haze, coursing through nine coalescent compositions of amorphous yet absorbing electronics. …
Trap
Michal Vaľko, aka Line Gate makes a return to mappa with his third cassette for the label. Once again the material is deeply minimalist, but shows marked evolutions in the Slovak, Prague-based artist’s unique trajectory. This time comprising two relatively short pieces (compared to the 40- and 60-minute works previously published on mappa), 'Trap' is perhaps Line Gate’s darkest yet. Whereas previously his works focused on psychoacoustic phenomena, or highlighted the sacredness and timelessness o…
Lo Becat
Opening a glimmering window into the brilliant scene currently percolating in Strasbourg, France, Morc Records returns with “Lo Becat”, their first offering from the stunning creative duo of Lise Barkas and Lisa Käuffert. Rendered on two bagpipes, intertwining elements of traditional French folk with the tactics, ideas, and approaches of experimental music, the resulting sounds unfurl a singular iteration of intoxicating long-tone minimalism that leaves you riveted to the core.
Resolve
Following several releases over the past decade of archival Arnold Dreyblatt & The Orchestra of Excited Strings material and collaborations with other ensembles, on labels including Black Truffle, Choice Records, Megafaun and Superior Viaduct, Drag City is excited as well to be able to introduce Resolve, the first release of new Excited Strings music from Arnold Dreyblatt since 2002. Resolve acts in dialogue with the minimalist inspirations of the first Arnold Dreyblatt & The Orchestra of Excite…
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.
Propellers In Love
Arnold Dreyblatt has been called "the most rock 'n' roll of all the composers to emerge from New York's downtown scene in the 1970s." Arnold Dreyblatt founded the Orchestra Of Excited Strings in 1979, harnessing unusual tuning intervals to an exuberant performance style. Propellers In Love, the Orchestra's second album – originally released in 1986 on the Stasch imprint, in conjunction with the contemporary art space Künstlerhaus Bethanien – develops Dreyblatt's rhythmically exacting exploration…
Ghosted
It was early in 2019 — no, November 2018! — that Oren Ambarchi, Johan Berthling and Andreas Werliin met at Studio Rymden, in a quiet suburban district of Stockholm, to make the music that became Ghosted.
Mind Maintenance (LP)
Meditative moods from the Chicago duo of bassist Josh Abrams and percussionist Chad Taylor. With Taylor on mbira and Abrams on guimbri, instruments from diverse African states, finding a new pairing that moves past world music and jazz into something new, to do with dance, meditation, listening and convergence. Natural Information Society's Abrams has been using the guimbri, a lute-style bass, for years, but it's rarely sounded better than it does here, alongside Taylor's resonant mbira. Taylor …
The Terrestrial Sea
Texturally detailed ambient-electronic study on the relationships between man made and natural environments in the Cromarty Firth, Scotland. File somewhere between Cindytalk and Richard Skelton
Wound Response
Another piece of the puzzle to his 4-part ‘Pedlar’ boxset, this one was thrown down in 2011 at Newcastle’s legendary Morden Tower, a C.13th, grade-listed turret on the West Walls of the city’s ancient defences against curious Mackems and Durham scunners, that was also previously and notably site of seminal recordings by The New Blockaders, a.o. In that vein, Davies gets raw to the bone in ‘Wound Response’, using Lap harp fed thru transducer, read by contact microphone, and pushed to seething lim…
Dregs
* Edition of 150 * Debut LP from Capers. Slow and repetitive tape noise, with emphasis on noise. Sums it up pretty good. For those aquainted with earlier Capers material, those sounds are still present, but as a whole Dregs is a step in a different direction. "Sounds like someone is running a Puch Dakota through a huge wall made out of shit."
Fast Edit
Fast Edit is the second LP by Still House Plants, a Glasgow and South London-based three-piece collective made up of Finlay Clark, David Kennedy, and Jessica Hickie-Kallenbach. As artists who started to write music together during their second year at The Glasgow School of Art, Still House Plants emerged from the eclectic scene surrounding Glasgow's Green Door Studio and soon found a home at London's Cafe OTO, where they undertook a six-month residency in 2018. Factor in a semester spent living …
Function
‘Function’ is an aesthetic exploration of digital audio at an elemental level: a sequence of quantized amplitude values. The entire sonic material in this series are generated through a custom-designed program that takes a mathematical function as input, and based on a set of pre-defined criteria, outputs the function as a digital waveform. Accordingly, each track in this series is named after one mathematical function, where the function itself is used as the only sound-generating engine. These…
Star Trap
Stunning archival live recordings from Arnold Dreyblatt & The Orchestra Of Excited Strings which have remained unreleased until now.
Your Own Self
Garrett List’s work for Opus One, in 1972, was a remarkable creative effort, conceived like a celebration of a higher self-consciousness. The context is avant-garde minimalism, but the music is enriched by a deep spiritualism; it echoes the most meditative jazz of the age, taking also advantage from the mystic lesson of La Monte Young. Everything is solved in a free, moderate and brilliant language, pure and elegant. It’s quintessential, in these rare moments of beauty, the instrumentation of th…
Nodal excitation
"By the late '80s most of the burgeoning minimal underground had been forgotten, especially one amazing character, Arnold Dreyblatt. Dreyblatt only had one record, Nodal Excitation (on the mostly post-AACM jazz label India Navigation), before he packed and moved to Berlin, where he concentrated on his other activities, making only two more records over the next 10 years. But for those who caught the action, Arnold was the man. He was more rock that any of the others combined, and he was also the…
Sharing a Sonority
Alga Marghen proudly presents a new chapter in the documentation series of Charlemagne Palestine's historical works. This CD of previously-unavailable recordings not only presents you Charlemagne Palestine activities in 1974, collaborating with some of most important experimental artists and composers from either the New York loft scene and Cal Arts, but also features world premiere recordings of Terry Jennings and The Fundamental D Flat Group. "Short & Sweet" is the title of a breathtaking duo …
Radial
Radial was recorded on the first of June 2003 on acoustic cello without overdubs or editing. Radial is a piece in three parts, a structure of continuous sound and/or silence. Random order of the parts is encouraged. "Nikos Veliotis uses his cello without overdubs to break long minutes of silence with longer, muffled "manual" drones. "Radial" is one of those records I like calling "Sunday afternoon winter music": it's perfect in those grey cold days when you just want to stare out of the window…