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After a two-decade interlude, Jim O’Rourke’s Moikai returns with Spectral Evolution, a major new work by Rafael Toral. Making his name in the mid-1990s with influential guitar drone platters like "Sound Mind Sound Body" and "Wave Field" (both reissued by Drag City in recent years), Toral has never been one to rest on his laurels repeating his past glories. In the early years of the 21st century, Toral laid the guitar aside, along with the focus on extended tones that had defined much of his musi…
Finally repressed, 180gram vinyl. The Ethio Jazz album by Mulatu Astatatke is a jewel of the modern Ethiopian music. Essential. An incredibly groovy Ethiopian record, originally from 1969-1972. Amazing orchestral 'Ethio-groove' filled with US soul, jazz, sometimes Latin and the deepest Eastern rhythms, even including some great nasty and dirty fuzz guitars. A true gem of Ethiopian modern instrumental music, which illustrates perfectly this symbiosis of strong rhythms and quality arrangements of…
Sublime, ethereal minimalism: the first drawing together of Hiroyuki Onogawa’s soundtrack compositions, plotting a decade of music for films by cult filmmaker Gakuryū Ishii. ‘Sequenced into an album by Onogawa himself, this retrospective spans a fertile period of collaboration with Ishii, through soundtracks for three remarkable films — August in the Water (1995), Labyrinth of Dreams (1997), and Mirrored Mind (2005) — where the cinema is texturally and sensually imbued with the spiritual, ambien…
The birth of Japan’s nascent acid folk scene was rooted in the messy and invigorating political climate of the late 1960s. It is a story of Dadaists, communists, pharmacists and cult leaders, led by a young generation of upstart students, artists and dreamers hellbent on turning their world upside down. Born on the campuses of Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka, and centred around newly formed independent label and left-wing stronghold URC, this uniquely Japanese form of folk expression provided an outlet f…
An unearthed treasure from the '70s Italian avant garde archives! A previously unreleased recording from the legendary Beat72 club in Rome in 1973, featuring a one-off Italian-American all-star ensemble with Roberto Laneri founding member of the experimental vocal group Prima Materia, maverick American composer Alvin Curran co-founder of Musica Elettronica Viva. Trombone specialist Giancarlo Schiaffini from the historical Gruppo di improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza. Cello virtuoso Frances Marie U…
Best known for his proficiency on the Oud, John Berberian has been releasing music since the early-1960s. While attending New York's Columbia University, Berberian made his professional musical debut playing the Oud in support of violinist Reuben Sarkisian. While completing an MBA from Harvard, Berberian managed to find the time to become a staple on the Manhattan nightclub scene. In 1964 he was signed to Bob Shad's New York-based Mainstream Records, where he recorded a pair of Middle Eastern-th…
To pour some out for one of their heroes, the cosmos’ own Sun Ra, Bitchin Bajas simply cut a slice of their own DNA and amplify it! Or something like that: they clearly vibe with Ra in hypno-symbiosis, setting the controls of their analog synths for the heart of Sun. Bonus mixtribute: a heartfelt doff to Queen Wendy C, sythnaut and another mother!
This compilation simply needs to be heard to be believed. Who knew that a psychedelic beat garage scene thrived in the pre-revolution Iran of the 1960s? As revealed herein, artists such as Googoosh and Kourosh and groups such as the Littles, the Flowers, and the Golden Ring did their best to muster echoes of the Shadows, the Ventures, the Beatles, and the Stones, delivering their lyrics in poetic Persian and keeping plenty of reverb on those rocking lead guitar riffs. With tons to discover on th…
"In this album, Akira Umeda mixes 42 recordings, dated between 1988 and 2018, which, in a sense, reflect the incredible range of his creative work: from songs, to ambient music; from field recordings to prank calls. The cassette tapes, whose contents make up this double-LP, had been stored in Umeda’s house in São José dos Campos, in São Paulo, Brazil.
Restless, and easily bored, Akira moved seamlessly from one activity to another – he was a little bit of everything (and nothing at all). Such pe…
* 2021 Stock *He started his career with the 60’s musical movement known as Jovem Guarda (Young guard, as in vanguard), which was the first manifestation of the Brazilian pop rock movement, getting great success with the songs A Praça (Carlos Imperial) and Meu Bem (a version in Portuguese by Ronnie for “Girl”, the Beatles’ song). Beatlemaniac, Ronnie recorded seven songs of the group from Liverpool in his first album. Joining the naivety of the 60’s, a pretty face and a great voice, Ronnie had m…
An epic second installment from the trio of Mats Gustafsson, David Grubbs, Rob Mazurek, nearly 90 minutes of intense live performances from January 2020. They converge here on a wide swath of sounds: expansive free improvs, full-tilt electronics, alt-universe chamber music and spontaneous arrangements of three previously released Grubbs’ songs.
** 2022 repress ** Available on vinyl for the first time in 40 years, Outernational Sounds proudly presents a crucial document from the Los Angeles jazz underground - the Pan-Afrikan Peoples Arkestra at their most together, stretching out on home turf in 1979, with the legendary Horace Tapscott at the helm. Horace Tapscott is one of the unsung giants of jazz music. A gifted composer and arranger, a boldly original pianist, and above all a visionary bandleader, Tapscott’s recorded footprint is sm…
The newly established label bié Records follows Yu Su's winter 2019 tour of mainland China where she travelled from Qingdao, the western shore of Yellow Sea Coast to Xining, the largest urban hub on the Tibetan Plateau. As she encounters musical artists and enthusiasts at the foreground of the explosive leftfield electronic scene across China, she is inspired to participate and contribute; Yu Su is delighted to offer her debut album Yellow River Blue for release through bié Records in China, wit…
2023 marks the twenty-eighth year of Suarasama; it is also the first year for this reissue of their 2013 masterpiece, Timeline. Irwansyah Harahap and Rithaony Hutajulu, Ethnomusicology lecturers at University of Sumatera Utara, founded Suarasama in 1995 after graduating from the University of Washington Ethnomusicology program. Their music, as expressed on both Timeline and Fajar Di Atas Awan (first issued in 1998, reissued by Drag City in 2008) is hypnotic and joyful; progressing ancient North …
Song Cycle Records present a reissue of Strategic Structures by Robert Rauschenberg, Kat Epple, and Bob Stohl, originally released in 1989. Available for the first time on vinyl, this is powerful instrumental music performed by the three on electronics, and a series of musical metal sculptures called "Strategic Structures". The sounds range from other-worldly, foreboding resonant tones, to angelic, celestial timbres. These spontaneous compositions were created and performed live, with no overdub…
Loud Object is the second solo release from artist Billy Steiger, following his self released 'Recordings, drawings and photographs from in and around Frîdd Newydd' in 2016. Both a visual artist and a musician, Steiger’s Loud Object plays as a two sided experiment in markmarking and sound, as a kind of writing by ear - metallic, brushed, wooden - lines imprinted and pressed circular.
The record takes its name from the discarded title of the several-hundred-page draft of Clarice Lispector’s ev…
Full recording of one of the most engaging and beguiling Late Junction live sessions we’ve ever heard - the one off first meeting between Korean multi-instrumentalist Park Jiha and writer and performer Roy Claire Potter. Park Jiha plays the saenghwang, a Korean mouth organ which she blows in long multiphonics to set pace for Potter’s words. Together they unfurl a scene slowly in front of you, rich and focused, shifting your field of vision and drawing you in, elsewhere. It’s impossible not to f…
George Russell was one of the most advanced composers and arrangers in the history of Jazz. A theorist and innovator who worked extensively between the 40's and the early 2000's. Originally released by Decca in 1960, "Jazz in the Space Age" was Russell's third effort under his name. A visionary work including music composed and arranged by Russell for various lineups featuring the likes of pianists Bill Evans and Paul Bley, trombonist Bob Brookmeyer, drummer Charlie Persip and others. This is ad…
Originally recorded and released in 1980, "Six of One" beautifully captures the detail in Evan Parker's high frequency split tones for which he is now perhaps better known. Five years on from "Saxophone Solos" and with circular breathing and polyphonics well worn into his live performances, Parker's experimentations here produce sustained passages of brilliant flight. Set into the echoes and resonances of a St Judes On The Hill church, the results are stunning.
"The recital commences with a sp…
Fellini 60’s experimental flick Toby Dammit is a great film by a legendary director. 'Liberally adapted' from Poe's 'Don't Wager Your Head to the Devil', Federico Fellini's Toby Dammit was shot in twenty-six days over the winter of 1967-68, at the experimental film centre near Cinecetta in Rome. It is an extraordinary piece of genuine film psychedelia, and rightly regarded to be amongst the director's finest work.
Dammit reveals that he haunted this personal apparition of the devil; a littl…