Gerritt Wittmer & Ryan Jencks and their blackened noise hailing from Oakland, California named Deathroes. Total Auditory destruction by these west coast veterans debut collaboration LP. Dark psychedelic drone, walls of sounds, electronic impossibility. Tectonic plates shift and rain of lava annihilates ones own soul along with everyone else’s. Enligthment and new death-born feelings combined with hallucinations so sharp and vivid that they lead to the disintegration of all senses. Salvation, ela…
Deaf Center's second album Owl Splinters from 2011 gets a lavish re-packaging as a gatefold, double-LP. It includes the Svarte Greiner re-interpretation album, Twin, as well as new cover art with photos by cinematographer Joshua Zucker-Pluda. Owl Splinters was originally released six years after DC's debut, Pale Ravine. In contrast to their previous work, it was recorded in a studio setting (Nils Frahm's Durton studio, to be exact), and the lo-fidelity, haphazard techniques of their early record…
Deas is the new moniker of London-based guitarist Cameron Deas, and String Studies, his first LP of all electronic-based material, is unlike anything else he's released. Recorded at home between February and March of 2014, the 8 pieces on this LP were recorded live with very few overdubs, with Deas's 12-string acoustic guitar used as a sampling source to trigger and in turn be manipulated by a modular system. The immaculate production and scalpel-sharp twists and turns found within the music dis…
Mysterious French outfit The Dead Mauriacs return to Discrepant in full exotic wind force after their sell-out cassette, Cocktails Pour La Fin Des Temps (2016). Beauté Des Mirages picks up on the same themes of frantic, abstract exotica and concrete cocktails the French act is known for. Running for two, long 18-minute sides full of fake(?) vintage atmospheres and armchair jungle hallucinations, Beauté Des Mirages is an abstract journey into a beautiful (and sometimes scary) world of mirages. Al…
** Edition of 300 ** For his second escapade under the Danse Musique Rhône Alpes banner, Loup Gangloff, half of Deux Boules Vanille, digs in solo the furrow of an artisanal dance music made largely from percussions and electronic treatments. From 2011, Gangloff reconciles his past as a visual artist with his ambitions as a musician, and launches himself and Frédéric Mancini into the elaboration of drums connected to home-made analogue synthesizers allowing to introduce melodies, textures, random…
Sasu Ripatti presents Dancefloor Classics Vol. 1 - 5, a series of five 10" releases coming throughout 2023. Music for imaginary dancefloors, released on Ripatti's own label "Rajaton".
”Look up, into the light” she said, while the camera shutter clicked. ”Like this? Does it look holy?” His neck felt stiff. Her reply: ”Yes, just like that. What do you mean holy? Like religious? ”No, more like trying to look very far, somewhere beyond what we can see.” ”Okay, stand still, I’m going to come close to…
** Limited edition of 300 copies. Silkscreen printing on 350 gm paper, black inner ** In Vivo is a cross-media collaboration between clarinetist and composer Gareth Davis and Slovenian-born photographer Klavdij Sluban, released on IIKKI. It sets Sluban’s images from throughout his career, primarily of jailed teenagers in prisons around the world, to Davis’s contemporary classical music informed by post-rock and noise music.
**300 copies, orange vinyl** Scanner and Gareth Davis, known separately for contemporary electronic music and free clarinet experimentations team up to create the delirious trip, Footfalls. Two scenes are presented here, seemingly taken from different sides of the same desolated seaside setting, loosly inspired by poet and novalist T.S. Elliot and Samuel Beckett.In Towards the Door, Gareth Davis' bass clarinet breathes slow, wave-like tones that merge with the oft-rythmic electronic textures fro…
Yannick Dauby is a french sound artist based in Taiwan since 2007. He relentless explores the soundscapes of his adopted island through field recording, audio documentaries and community projects. He also composes electroacoustic music and he's often found performing live using found objects, analogue devices and digital processing. He has created soundtracks and sound environments for contemporary dance, public art and films as well as being involved in various ecological and local traditional …
** Edition of 300 individually numbered copies pressed on red vinyl ** Thorny, brittle, highly unusual electronic brilliance by Hamburg enigma Ulrich Rehberg aka Ditterich von Euler-Donnersperg, a covert operator who may or may not be behind Werkbund’s near-mythical output. If yr into anything from the maziest Bernard Parmegiani gear, Gerald Donald at his most inventive, or the proprioceptive concrète scapes of Marina Rosenfeld - this is compelling, essential listening. Since the early ’80s Uli’…
Limited edition of 70 copies. Vinyl comes as "oxblood" red with black splatters in heavy gatefold with gold embossed print on front. Includes unlimited streaming
Digitalis root out yet another dazzling label debut, this one a beautiful second LP of romantic synth-boogie from Kansas City's Brandon Knocke aka Discoverer. Operating within the realm comfortably inhabited by Hype Williams, Laurel Halo, Morgan Geist or Glass Candy, 'Tunnels' is all about the enigma of electronic desire. Whether that's unrequited robot love, utopian yearnings or something more esoteric is for you to ascertain. These eight communiques are just dripping with electronic emotion, f…
* 250 copies, hand numbered * Composed on a special request from ini.itu, “Rivages sur l'antipode” (shores on the opposite side of the earth) is his first vinyl LP and is based on similar archival material as the one used by Francisco López in his stunning “untitled #228”. Nonetheless, D'incise (aka Laurent Peter) has achieved radically different results, combining digitally-processed textures, microsamples and humming harmonics rippling out over broken rhythms. He has collaged the least obvious…
Distorted through a shattered lens, Diminished Men refocus hard-boiled cinema and classic instrumental music into something entirely unique.Vision in Crime, their third LP on Sun City Girls' Abduction label, unfolds like a paranormal detective story full of delinquent exotica, deranged noir, hyperventilating surf, and shortwave radio nightmares. Opening number "Chamber," an apparition of a forensics crime scene investigation, sets the tone but quickly spirals into the cobra-twilight guitar work …
Zs could quite possibly be the modern jazz equivalent of Lou Reed‘s Metal Machine Music or Borbetomagus for a new generation. Their uncompromising sonic assault commands attention, consistently leaving an impression on the listener that is not likely to be forgotten. After a couple cassette EPs, founding Zs member, Sam Hillmer, finally delivers his solo album, an introspective journey that successfully expresses Hillmer’s starkly unique vision. Rather than repeat the organic noise attack…
In 1972 Francois de Roubaix and Bernard Maitre composed together the music of a TV series for children presented by puppets, called the Onix. The musical oddity here released by WeMe Records is a part of this OST. This piece of music demonstrates once again that Francois de Roubaix was in touch with all kinds of music of his time, including contemporary music. In this experimental track we can feel the influences of the composer Pierre Henry, an other explorer of unknown sounds. On the B …
** 180 gram vinyl housed in a black silkscreened bottom-folded heavy jacket. Limited edition of 525 copies ** Enkidu is the mythical Japanese psychedelic noise project of legendary performers Chie Mukai (Taj Mahal Travelers, Che-Shizu, East Bionic Symphonia, Dadnur), Eric Cordier & Seichi Yamamoto (the Boredoms, Omoide Hatoba, Rashinban, Ontoko). Over four bruised side-long cuts, Live in Kyoto faithfully captures the intensity of one particularly eviscerating evening of ritualized self expressi…
The work of noise musician Aaron Dilloway, formerly of Wolf Eyes, exudes a raw vulnerability and needling playfulness. His new album strikes a balance between dread and curiosity.
D.K.’s blissed performance at intimate S. Korean venue The Edge becomes the latest LP on 12th Isle Following in a familiar vein to D.K.’s enchanted fortcoming Good Morning Tapes EP, the Paris-based producer of Vietnamese descent spies a rolling soundscape of lissom rhythmic contours and finely graded harmonic humidities across the tranquilising expanse of ‘Live at The Edge’. Everything inside feels to float gradually higher from the ground and hold a mid-air conference of chirruping avian elec…
Stéphane Laporte's solo musical project, Domotic, is a fine example of longevity. Since Bye Bye, his first album released in 2002, the Parisian conscientiously digs a groove aligning on the same axis — which over time looks more like an orbit — the aesthetically perfect pop of the Beatles, psychedelic rock, Old School Ambient, the glorious electronica of the 90’s, the eccentricities of "library music" and the rigor of minimalism. However, it would be unwise to reduce the half-dozen albums and t…
Custodian marks a much grander stylistic experiment in The Cyrillic Typewriter’s discography of cinematic pop enigmaticism. Explained away as a score for an unreleased horror film, Custodian may be a uniquely Ruritarian soundtrack, referencing an origin of unverifiable existence, a plausible, approachable, but ephemeral stranger. Suggesting a Heart of Darkness narrative of doomed exploration and dreaded discovery, the album employs swelling drones and Delphic female vocals to convey an overarchi…
*270 copies limited edition* Centred around Maria Rossi aka Cucina Povera’s muzzy vocal loops and the faintest melodic motifs, London-based composer and multi-instrumentalist Ben Vince accompanies on saxophone, synth and piano, shrouding Rossi's vocals in swirls of dimly lit psychedelic smoke. As a newcomer to London, Rossi was "caught up in a sort of wondrous overwhelm” - a feeling that seeps through every movement of the almost hour long album. Working mostly at the Roundhouse, the pair find a…
William Bennett’s Cut Hands mark a decade of disruption with magnum opus ‘Sixteen ways Out’, hailing a surprising change of pace and style into spare chamber versions of his work voiced by his creative and life partner Mimsy DeBlois
Preceded by a seven year absence, Cut Hands’ return to the fray is a solemn and haunting affair that operates in the shadowy nether region between electro-acoustic and classical musicks. Compositions from that fecund first run of Cut Hands between 2011-2015 are here …
* Edition of 300 * This album has been a slow build over the past eight years, and it is Brian’s first solo release in close to twenty years. The years in between have included a move to the other side of the world (Christchurch to Joshua Tree), and the loss of his brother, who was close in age. This World Just Eats Me Up Alive confronts these topics within Brian’s maelstroms of noise, with his scratchy vocals conveying stories of protagonists living in the gutters of society. It’s a shockingly …
Mike Cooper's Blue Guitar is a collection that first appeared on Cooper's Hipshot CDr label in 2010 in a limited edition. It is presented here on Idea Records, for the first time on vinyl. Upon its initial release Cooper wrote: "For the past couple of years I have been collating a body of text culled (mostly) from Thomas Pynchon's novels Gravity's Rainbow and V and making cut-up collage pieces in the spirit of William Burroughs, Kurt Schwitters, Tom Phillips and others. Those two particular nove…
Cremation Lily’s “Dreams Drenched in Static” exists at the horizon of consciousness and heavy experimental music. Through the use of frenetic vocal melodies, tape degradation, and guitar noise, the album documents the liminal moments at the edge of sleep, and the distressing thoughts that often accompany late-night R.E.M. disturbances. The lyrics were largely written at three in the morning and serve to evoke the depression and meditations on death that seem to haunt these early hours.
Based in …
Cremation Lily is the project of UK-based Z. Zsigo. For the past five years, Zsigo has been consistently working under most people's radars with his distinctly personal take on power electronics, developing a modest cult following and a respectable catalog of releases through his Strange Rules label. In 2012 the project was brought to the attention of Steve Underwood from Harbinger Sound who subsequently released the Fertility Servant 7" and the project began to gather a more visible live presen…
Fresh imprint Caldeira open their account with the first vinyl retrospective of Swiss composer Louis Crelier, whose FM sorcery and Linn Drum drama takes the listener away to an imaginary Africa. Standing proud amid the sound waves, Caldeira emerges with a singular mission; to bring us music with hidden depth. Whether it’s a reissue or retrospective, archival or original, each release reflects the Michelin-grade tastebuds of label founder Camille Bertin AKA Plastic Bamboo. Operating out of the sh…
There are commitments whose delineations are only defined by a territory. The series initiated in 2016 by Marion Cousin prompts an exploration of the Iberian Peninsula through its enchanted traditions, and creates for to each region a singular collaboration, born from her desires, encounters and friendships. How many albums will this series include? What forms will they take? Who will her fellow music explorers be? Nothing seems fixed here. This second opus clinches the project in its playground…
Costes practices the scorched earth policy. Everything you can listen to after it is made paltry and lighter than air. This is also what we recognize important records. They are not necessarily fun but replace all the others. The killed life is a major disc, stupid and brilliant, regressive and decisive, a political record and in its way more ecumenical and unifying than all the speeches of national reconciliation. 500 numbered copies.
Endlessness is the long-awaited and last instalment of a trilogy of
pieces for electric organ by artist Alfredo Costa-Monteiro. A follow-up
to Umbralia (2011) and Insula (2014), this third piece is composed by
two parts, essentially austere in approach but extremely rich in tonal
range, with a strong mesmerizing atmosphere. Through the circularity of
their forms, it explores the idea that persistence of time is our
measure of infinitude. Play loud.Born in 1964 in Porto (Portugal) Alfredo C…
Finish The Sun, the second offering from Shane Cooper & Mabuta, is a glowing and energetic album, rooted in grooves from all over the African continent. The six-piece outfit draws on influences from Mali, Nigeria, the Sahel, Morocco; and the many sounds that make up their native South Africa. This musical trip seamlessly dances through Afrobeat, maskandi, funk and hip hop, to moments of cinematic beauty. All embedded with subtle hints of 70s psychedelia. The core group of Shane Cooper, Bokani Dy…
*Limited to 250 copies* The fourth entry in the series of six 12"/MLP releases. Brian Conniffe is a cross-genre, experimental musician who has worked with a long list of collaborators including Nurse With Wound, notable for a style which fuses the darkest psychedelia with disquieting ambience. Suzanne Walsh is a visual artist and musician, whose practice involves musical collaborations with various artists as well as her own solo artistic work, which crosses over between art and music worlds. Ne…
Hegemony of Delete is electronic music in dialogue with the real rhythms of work and leisure. As Co La, Matthew Papich courts the minor distractions and interruptions typically seen to dilute workflow or artistic process. With or without an audience—in the studio and in performance—his music subtly works the room, not unlike those comedians who semi-secretly draw their momentum from crowd “interruptions.”
The six songs of this 12” bear the marks of Co La’s working method, to which the title refe…
It’s time to welcome in the era of New Exotica with “Daydream Repeater”, the debut LP by Co La, gentleman and purveyor of all things avant-luxury. Matthew Papich designs a new sonic territory, creating something that nods to Jamaican Rocksteady and 50′s American Pop in spirit, but ultimately presents an elegant re-purposing of those parts into fresh, smart, electronic music. For all seeking an attitude adjustment in the era of austerity, try burning one for Co La’s cultivated luxury sound – you …
This pairing has been in the wings for a few years now by our count, but tripped things come to those who wait, so better late-as-shit than never. Cloudland Canyon have been spanning geographies (Brooklyn, Germany, Memphis) and genres (krautrock, drone, psych-pop) since at least 2002, but only recently has their technological studio-sorcery began to gather steam. Their offering here (“Harvest Hunt”) is a mechanical motorik ascent into symphonic hypnosis. Comparisons to classic Teutonic psych out…
Big Tip! The first new Climax Golden Twins record in too many years. This new double LP features contributions by friends from Seattle’s vibrant music scene and beyond including Alan and Richard Bishop (Sun City Girls), Ko Ishikawa (master Japanese sho player), Greg Kelley (extended trumpet technique specialist), Porest (Sublime Frequencies’ Mark Gergis), Jeph Jerman, Dave Knott, members of Kinski, Diminished Men, the A Frames, Dreamsalon, Monktail Creative Music Concern, and more. The first new…
* Recorded to four-track cassette 9/09-10/09 in Brooklyn, NY. Edition of 400 copies with glossy jackets and inner sleeves.* Working together, but differently. Clear Of, shows Cloaked Light working within a new mode; an expanded temporal sensitivity through field recording and discrete static chords. Slow movement- revealing growth and decay at the subtlest thresholds; disappearing music with a heavy presence, a shifting sense of space, not in the room, but of the room. Pale Blue Sky's Someday, S…
"Breaking Day is the second full-length album from Cleared, the Chicago-based duo of Steven Hess and Michael Vallera. While their self-titled debut album found the duo exploring themes of stasis and texture, Breaking Day represents a huge development in the scope and overall style of the project. Where previous material had been slowly assembled from dozens of individual recordings and experiments, this new collection of songs was born from the raw documentation of Cleared's live performance in …
Italian, French-speaking and blessed with a Belgian accent Christophe Clébard brings a coherence that prevails both for his person and for his music: a wobbly mound, which sometimes resembles a series of explosions, sometimes a pile of layers cut by a flood of words from which parts can be distinguished. Relying on the amplified intonation of a saturated microphone, a pounding rhythm box and a synthesizer, his performances absorb the hearing to spit it out in a universe where nothing has any mea…