Music from Germany

*300 copies limited edition CD in 6-panel digisleeve* "A Con Cristal", the third Cranioclast album - or rather EP - originally released in 1987, and "Rats Can Coil - Cats Can Roil" from 1990, are offered for the first time, and together, on CD in a limited edition completely restored and remastered by Andrea Marutti. Three new tracks based on "Rats - Cats" are also added as a welcome unreleased bonus under the title "Accidental encounter of rats and cats on a turntable"; running time of this new…

*300 copies limited edition CD in 6-panel digisleeve* Almost 40 years after its first release in 1986, and just three months after the release of "Arctic Salon", their latest double LP, Cranioclast's second album is finally available on CD for the first time in a limited edition completely restored and remastered by Andrea Marutti. When the whole Cranioclast discography is considered, "Kolik San Art" is probably their album that hosts the most 'guest' musicians and offers the greatest blending o…

German pianist Wolfgang Dauner's early session sounds as fantastic as the title suggests! The "dream talk" component comes from Dauner's gentle, yet modern approach to the keys, which is clearly learning from 50s modernists like George Russell or Bill Evans but is stretching out here in some of the bolder freedoms of the European scene at the time. It's a precursor to later modes on MPS and Saba, but performed here with more restraint. The record is acoustic and inventive, with a "set free" soun…

LP issued to celebrate more European artists than ever before winning the annual “Downbeat” polls in 1969. On this release they all perform as a unit. Jazz giants from six European countries coalesce to play wide-open music. One of Norway’s greatest jazz singers, Karin Krog has worked and recorded with Jan Garbarek and Clare Fischer. English multi-saxophonist John Surman and Krog have jointly won two Norwegian Grammys. Surman has played with Mike Westbrook’s Orchestra and John McLaughlin, as wel…

Tip, tip tip! *2024 stock. Deluxe packaging* Listening to the music of Stephan Micus – which is as itinerant and wide ranging as his life – is one of the most profound experiences possible today. Beyond categories and labels, this German artist was already way ahead of trends when he released his first album in 1976. Fifteen recordings later The Garden of Mirrors, his first CD since the phenomenal Athos, seems on the surface to be heading in a stylistic direction pointing towards the Orient. But…

Stephan Micus is a unique musician and composer. He collects and studies instruments from all around the world and creates his own musical journeys with them. This is his 25th solo album for ECM and its sound is dominated by the four-metre long Tibetan dung chen trumpet, an instrument he has recently learned and is using for the first time. It was the thunderous sound of this instrument that led to the album’s name and its nine tracks celebrating deities around the world. “I dedicate this music …

At that time the tenth Embryo LP, recorded in India in 1976 and in Switzerland in 1977, released in 1978 on the April label. Again in the well-known Embryo style: progressive jazz-rock with strong world music influences and only occasional vocals. The vinyl has never been reissued, there was a CD edition in 1999 on Disconforme, but it has long since been cancelled. A very relaxed album, and while there are occasional highlights in individual contributions, the overall impression is that it just …

*2024 stock* Ovidono is an auditory art project by Markus Popp (aka Oval) and Vlatka Alec, a fascinating scenario for a new kind of musical storytelling. Sensual, dazzling and multi-layered, the project - originally codenamed "ASMR 2.0" - combines a new interpretation of the epic, timeless poetry of Ovid and Ono No Komachi (performed in Japanese by Eriko Toyoda aka SO) with Oval's electro-acoustic compositions, post-digital soundscapes and ambitious vocal processing. The complex, whispered vocal…

Mega tip! Even within the sprawling oeuvres of Sven-Åke Johansson and Alexander von Schlippenbach, both known for their innovative rethinking and broadening of artistic categories, the dramatic work "... über Ursache und Wirkung der Meinungsverschiedenheiten beim Turmbau zu Babel" ("... on cause and effect of the disagreements during the building of the Tower of Babel") remains a unique and rare enigma: What is it actually? Johansson has alternately called it a music drama, an opera, and a sings…

"Was it yesterday or tomorrow?" That release is a tape that Atom Heart did for the first edition of the Ambient City radio at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki 1994.

The legendary Don Cherry with his great 1966 quintet featuring Gato Barbieri (tenor sax) Karl Berger (piano) Bo Stief (bass) Aldo Romano (drums) which can also be heard on three fine releases on ESP-Disk, and with the New York Total Music Company in 1968. His quintet was on very fine form at this time, it captures a crucial stage of Cherry’s journey from free jazz to yet wilder territories. The recording was made for radio broadcast and is nice and clear: this is the first time it has been is…

Glacial Movements is proud to present the soundscapes of Canadian artist Aidan Baker. His first appearance was with the song "Beneath the Ice" on "Cryosphere", the first and only compilation of the entire catalogue. Then in 2013, with "Aneira" (Welsh for 'snow') composed exclusively for GM, through the use of the 12-string acoustic guitar. Pithovirii is his new concept album, which was in part inspired by Vladimir Sorokin's novel Ice Trilogy which in turn led to reading about the Tunguska meteor…

Narrative film music and sound design for Robert Wiene 's classic 1920 psychological thriller. Digitally restored in 4K by the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Foundation. Musician and writer Karl Bartos has long been admirer of Weimar-era culture. During his time in Kraftwerk , he helped create the stunning track Metropolis , directly inspired by a band viewing of the classic 1927 Fritz Lang film of the same name. The original orchestral music composed for The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari by Giuseppe Becce …

"Recorded and produced during late night sessions from 2019-2022 while re-watching archive episodes of the German TV show Space Night from the late 90s."

"Sky, the record company, were more than a little disappointed with the performance of Grosskopf's first solo effort "Synthesist", so there was no great sense of urgency as far as its successor was concerned. "they even halved my advance!" Grosskopf recalls. "Oceanheart" was released some six years after "Synthesist". "The album title reflects my love of transcendental meditation, of course it might be taken for watery esoterics." (A similar vibe was evident in the cover art, hence fresh artwork…

2024 Repress. Eastern-infused outstanding album by German trombonist Albert Mangelsdorff – recording here in 1964, but sounding years ahead of his time, with an amazing a blend of jazz and Asian styles! The album's one of Mangelsdorff's best ever – a set of rhythmic tunes that seem clearly informed by the work of Ornette and Joe Harriott, but also based along eastern themes picked up by the group on a tour of the Orient – and performed by a sharp-edged quintet that includes Heinz Sauer on tenor …

*300 copies limited edition* Planned in the early 90's executed in the early 20's: The Arctic Salon. Another Cranioclast Expedition, this time to the Pole. A long time between planning and execution, but much shorter than the time between the first fake reports of having reached the North Pole on foot across the ice and the first expedition that really made it without motorization. But also a long time in which things in the Arctic and Antarctic got worse and worse and continue. Double LP almost…

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…

*300 copies limited edition* This record contains four tracks taken from a live performance which took place on December 3rd 2021 at the vinyl harvest record store in Esch-sur-Alzette Luxembourg. The concert was curated by non-profit organisation I am esch twenty too and the label mint.conception.recordings. I am esch twenty too was founded in 2020 as an alternative suggestion to the city of Esch-sur-Alzette being European Capital of Culture 2022 and its role and program. The budget for this con…

*300 copies limited edition* The Evelyn Tables, the oldest known anatomical preparations in Europe, dating to 1646, are an early yet humbling insight into the networks within the human body, a network within natural networks that govern the physical constraints of the human material existence. Observing them from the outside, they are uncannily reminiscent of a floral network, yet at the same time strangely familliar. The soundscapes of this work attempt to convey these ideas viscerally, through…