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New York City in the 1970s was an urban nightmare: destitute, dirty, and dangerous. As the country collectively turned its back on the Big Apple, two musical vigilantes rose out of the miasma. Armed only with amplified AC current, Suicide's Alan Vega and Marty Rev set out to save America's soul. Their weaponized noise terrorized unsuspecting audiences. Suicide could start a riot on a lack of guitar alone. Those who braved their live shows often fled in fear--or formed bands (sometimes both). Thi…
Computer World was Kraftwerk's most concise and focused conceptual statement, their most influential record and crowning achievement. Computer World transformed the way pop music was composed, played, packaged and released and, in the process, helped create entire new genres of music including hip-hop, techno, trance, electro, industrial and synth-pop. They influenced the influencers. Upon its release on 10 May 1981, the record was a revelation. It was unlike anything created for mainstream cons…
So much, popular and scholarly, has been written about the synthesizer, Bob Moog and his brand-name instrument, and even Wendy Carlos, the musician who made this instrument famous. No one, however, has examined the importance of spy technology, the Cold War and Carlos's gender to this critically important innovation.Through a postcolonial lens of feminist science and technology studies, Roshanak Kheshti engages in a reading of Carlos's music within this gendered context. By focusing on Switched-…
The Dead C's Clyma est mort (1993) is the record of a live gig for one person. Tom Lax was running the Siltbreeze label in Philadelphia and had come to New Zealand to meet the artists he was releasing. He heard The Dead C at their noisy, improvised best, turning rock music on its head with a free-form style of blaring, loosely organised sound. Leading a second wave of music from Dunedin, New Zealand, The Dead C were an assault against the kind of jangly pop that had made the Dunedin Sound famous…
The story of Afro-Brazilian percussionist Naná Vasconcelos stitches together histories of 1960s-1980s jazz, psychedelia, world music, experimentalism and post-punk. Based in Recife, Rio de Janeiro, New York City and Paris, Naná played with musicians as varied as Egberto Gismonti, Don Cherry, Pat Metheny, Ralph Towner, Arto Lindsay, Talking Heads, Laurie Anderson, Paul Simon, Jon Hassell, Brian Eno, Os Mutantes, and Milton Nascimento.This book traces the 15 years (1964-1979) leading up to Naná's …
This comprehensive portrait of Tropicália, exploring everything from influences and results to context and main players, demonstrates how the genre helped reinvent Brazil's cultural identity in a post-colonial world.
What the hell is shoegaze? A scene? A movement? A sound? Back in the Nineties, many would have said the so-called genre was entirely fabricated. The term itself, an offensive piss-take given by the notoriously catty and scene-obsessed British music press, was plainly rejected by the absurdly small collection of bands to which it supposedly applied.Today shoegaze is undeniable. As a descriptor and as a source of influence, it is used in more ways and by more bands than anyone could have dreamed o…
By inevitable coincidence, a street vendor in Buenos Aires became an instrument of providence, when he compelled attention of Christof Kurzmann, sitting outside a coffeehouse. His merchandise were small books of Hispanic writers, and the chosen one that ended up in the buyer’s pocket some eighteen years ago was a collection of poems by Argentinean poet Alejandra Pizarnik. Her works abound with music and sounds or absence of it, appreciating silence. For Kurzmann, this served as a sufficient reas…
**Massive hard-cover catalogue, nearly 800 pages, big size** This milestone volume maps fifty years of artists' engagement with sound. Since the beginning of the new millennium, numerous historical and critical works have established sound art as an artistic genre in its own right, with an accepted genealogy that begins with Futurism, Dada, and Fluxus, as well as disciplinary classifications that effectively restrict artistic practice to particular tools and venues. This book, companion volume t…
Krautrock is not a music genre. Krautrock is a way of life. Its sonic diversity and global reach belie the common culture from where it emerged. This is a band-by-band history.
In May 1945, the Allies defeated Nazi Germany, putting an end to the European front of World War II and the Third Reich. In the immediate aftermath, German youth were tasked to create their own culture. Krautrock is this unlikely success story, as hundreds of bands-including Kraftwerk and Can-seemed to sprout overnight in…
When you think of techno and electronic dance music, you first think of clubs and festivals, ecstatic dancers and enraptured DJs. But in which spaces is this music actually created? Artists' studios and writing rooms of authors and composers have long been the focus of public attention and research. The studios of DJs and electronic music producers, however, have so far remained largely hidden. They can be found in darkened basements, abandoned factories, garages, and backyards, in magnificently…
We no longer need to introduce the Cortex group and its leader Alain Mion! So here's the double single in 45rpm format from the “Inedit' 79” project, which came out of the drawers in 2006 and features recordings from 1979 and 1981 that were unpublished before 2006.
The track “I Heard A Sigh” has been sampled by a number of hip-hop artists, while “Where Do You Come From” will not appear on the LP due out at the end of April 2025.
We commemorate the late Phill Niblock with this release made in close collaboration with the composer just before his passing in January 2024. His life and work have had a profound influence on many contemporary composers, performers and artists, so it is a great honour to be able to present here, together with Echonance Festival, recordings of some of his very last compositions. The two works on this album, “Biliana” (2023) and “Exploratory, Rhine Version, Looking for Daniel” (2019) represent t…
“Hypnokaséta (2020-2021) is a continuous set of 16 pieces for string quartet, improviser (playing cassettes and any instrument) and live electronics. The source material is based on dreams that I had during the first few months of lockdown, April-June 2020. Accounts of these dreams are encoded in the music that is played by the quartet and also encrypted in the sound textures that surround this. The pieces alternate between quartet as the foreground and electronic interludes, where solos or duos…
Fourth Wave is thrilled to announce the release of “Trans Groove Express,” a stunning new compilation album curated by the legendary Japanese DJ and producer, Muro—widely celebrated as the King of Diggin’. This unique collection is meticulously selected and compiled from the extensive catalog of the renowned Japanese label, Express Records.
“Trans Groove Express” invites listeners on a musical journey to the other side of Express Records, shining a spotlight on rare and exquisite Japanese soul-p…
200 numbered copies, with handmade and buffered cover. Contains a A4 insert. Les Disques Omnison announces the release of Meditate & Destroy, the long-awaited debut LP by Leandro Barzabal and Céleste Gatier, a duo that has been making waves in experimental circles across France and Argentina. Following stunning live performances throughout France and a successful tour in Argentina alongside French noise musicians Cigve (Catherine Guesde) and Vomir (Romain Perrot), Barzabal and Gatier have distil…
Chicago Underground Duo is the long-running collaborative project of composer/trumpeter/electronicist Rob Mazurek (Exploding Star Orchestra, Isotope 217, New Future City Radio with Damon Locks) and composer/drummer/mbiraist Chad Taylor (jaimie branch’s Fly or Die, Marshall Allen’s Ghost Horizons, Luke Stewart’s Silt Trio). Hyperglyph is their first album in 11 years, and 8th in the absolute cabinet of wonders that is the Chicago Underground Duo. The pair have played music together in a multitude…
The Modern Soul Septett (later Modern Soul Band) was one of the hottest and most popular dance music groups in East Germany from the late 1960s to the mid-1980s.
In its early years, this band played a very unusual, raw, authentic, and freaky brand of funky Soul-Beat and Jazz-Rock for East Germany, which thrilled many music lovers and dance enthusiasts. The Modern Septett became one of the most booked dance bands in the country and recorded numerous outstanding tracks for the radio. Ahead of thei…
*Limited edition of 500 copies.* In 1972, the left-wing intellectual film critic Uwe Nettelbeck suggested to Anthony Moore that he should write some (relatively speaking) straight songs. He took up the challenge, inviting his old school friend Peter Blegvad over to Hamburg to form the band Slapp Happy. They were joined for a session in Wümme by the young singer Dagmar Krause and Faust as their rhythm section; the recording became the album Sort Of. After getting the band back together for reunio…