Music from New Zealand

*200 copies limited edition* After a string of acclaimed albums, Maxine Funke should need little introduction. With Leitmotiv, she surprises us once again, this time with five quiet, soft yet haunting pieces that slowly reveal themselves. Her distinctive voice almost whispers its way through keyboard tones and field recordings, moving somewhere between silence and melody, intimacy and unease. While having a dip into a more experimental bath, Funke remains deeply connected to her folk tradition. …

"In late 1975, Annea Lockwood realised her composition World Rhythms. It represents one of the first creative works exploring the potentials of field recordings in a multichannel setting. It is a landmark work and a composition that, on its 50th anniversary, has gently carried forward over the decades, but arguably now is only starting to come into true focus, and be understood for exactly how revolutionary it was. World Rhythms was a work concerned with a practice of sustained listening into th…

Gate's "3M" is a 7-inch vinyl single released by New Zealand experimental musician Michael Morley, known for his work with The Dead C, on the German label Toneschacht. This record captures Morley's signature lo-fi, noise-drenched sound, blending distorted guitars, feedback, and abstract structures typical of his solo Gate project from the 1990s.

Gate is a New Zealand-based experimental project led by Michael Morley of The Dead C, known for its raw, noise-infused soundscapes and limited-edition releases on labels like Siltbreeze and Precious Metal.​ The 7" single "Sunshine / Ives" captures Gate's signature style from the late 1980s to 1990s era, blending distorted guitar, drones, and abstract textures across gritty, lo-fi tracks that push boundaries between noise rock and avant-garde.

The duo of guitarist/vocalist Matthew Mitchell and producer Bevan Smith (aka Signer) present their release in Type's 7" series. In response to the upcoming self-titled album, they both decided to remix the track "Future Life" under their own solo guise. Bevan takes the track back to an almost skeletal form then builds new melodies and new vocals to create a bizarre, crumbled-up psychedelic monster. Flip over and we are introduced to Matthew Mitchell's Muriel Tsains project who, through a woozy g…

Mild summers, coolish winters, down there in Dunedin, New Zealand, were the oceanic climate storms around. Here she writes her songs, here she listens to the wind, catches sea breezes. She is Maxine Funke, singer/songwriter, emotional poet. She used to play in local bands. Then she launched a solo career. Five albums so far. On labels like Feeding Tube Records, A Colourful Storm and Warp’s subdivision Disciples. She is also part of Annie A, a new collaboration between her, Time is Away, Félicia …

This album presents Annea Lockwood’s complete concert piano works, born from a deep collaborative journey. It culminates in a new version of Ceci N’est Pas Un Piano, where voice and memory resonate through the piano’s frame via transducer speaker.

Gatefolf cover. Legendary New Zealand-born experimental composer and sound art pioneer Annea Lockwood returns to Black Truffle with On Fractured Ground / Skin Resonance, her third release for the label. Having recently celebrated her 85th birthday, Lockwood shows no sign of slowing down in her exploration of new sound sources and collaborations with an ever-growing intergenerational pool of performers – here with Vanessa Tomlinson. Her creative vibrancy is alive as ever on the two recent works p…

'The secret life of the inaudible’ is the first collaborative work of two of the 20th century's most revered and important female sound artist/electro-acoustic composers Christina Kubisch and Annea Lockwood. Using purely natural sounds, such as Volcanic gas vents, earthquakes, solar oscillations and ultrasonic tree sounds - as well as electromagnetic recordings from light systems and seismic research centers,transmitter systems and others, they build an ultra-vivid, immersive psychoacoustic mass…

“I have become fascinated by the complexity of the single sound.” - Annea Lockwood

Over the course of a nearly 50 year romantic and creative partnership sound artist Annea Lockwood and the late pioneering electronic composer Ruth Anderson have shared space on a number of significant releases of early electronic and tape music, including Charles Amirkhanian’s trailblazing 1977 anthology of women electronic composers New Music for Electronic and Recorded Media, a 1981 split LP on Opus One, a 1997 CD for Phill Niblock’s XI imprint, and 1998’s Lesbian American Composers compilatio…

*2022 stock.* A Colourful Storm presents Seance, a new set of songs by Maxine Funke. Following a productive recording period beginning with Silk (2018) and ending with Forest Photographer (2020), Seance marks a remarkable levitation of Funke’s tender, softly spoken songcraft first documented on Lace (2008) and Felt (2012) into new creative heights. Folksong confessionals with the burden of memory. Ghostly confines, murmurs from the cracks. Soil, blood and skin. The beauty and mundanity of the ev…

Fifth release in the MFR Contemporary Series. The Amsterdam-based ensemble MAZE (La Berge, Calderone, Davis, Kyriakides, Hijmans, van Houdt) realises two works by Annea Lockwood, both built around graphic scores derived from photographs of natural systems. Bayou-borne, for Pauline (2016) is dedicated to Pauline Oliveros and uses a map of Houston's bayous; Jitterbug (2007) interprets rocks from the Continental Divide with Lockwood's pre-recorded aquatic and terrestrial insect sounds.

Following on from the acclaimed Tiger Balm / Amazonia Dreaming / Immersion LP (BT028), Black Truffle is thrilled to present two major new instrumental works from legendary sound artist and experimental composer Annea Lockwood. Demonstrating the ever evolving and radically open nature of Lockwood’s practice, these two recent works were developed in close collaboration with their performers.  ‘Becoming Air’ (2018), developed with and performed by trumpeter Nate Wooley, uses extended technique and …

8mm Records’ latest - Gate’s "Winter Songs" - gathers three long form works of hazy fuzzed out guitar drones from the The Dead C’s Michael Morley, that amount to engrossing meditative expanses at the borders of ambient music, minimalism, and stoner rock. Inward looking and delicate, while bubbling with fury and life, it stands among our absolute favorite releases from one of the most interesting artists working today, and rides high among the best albums of the year so far.

Two of Annea Lockwood's dramatic works dealing with issues of spiritual wholeness. Duende (1997), about shamanic transformation, is written with and performed by Thomas Buckner. Lockwood selected sounds which reminded her of certain vocal transformations heard in recordings of shamanic ceremonies. In such singing, changes in the voice mirror and also help to bring about changes in the singer's mind and awareness. Within an improvisational framework, Buckner explores the possibility of change of …

*In process of stocking.* For a decade, Maxine Funke has cut an idiosyncratic path as a singer-songwriter, all the while avoiding the parochial retreads of that worn-out label. Funke's music is intimate and deeply intelligent, buoyed by a sense of effortlessness that belies a scrupulous attention to the smallest of details.Felt appeared in 2012 in a vinyl edition of 100 on the Epic Sweep imprint. This album has an altogether more crepuscular feel, making slightly fuller use of the sonic palette …

*In process of stocking.* For a decade, Maxine Funke has cut an idiosyncratic path as a singer-songwriter, all the while avoiding the parochial retreads of that worn-out label. Funke's music is intimate and deeply intelligent, buoyed by a sense of effortlessness that belies a scrupulous attention to the smallest of details.Lace was originally released as a CD-R in 2008 on Alastair Galbraith's Next Best Way label. Imagine the just-so arrangements of Josephine Foster and the knowing quotidian eye …

**in process of restock** Originally published in the mid-1970s, Womens Work was a magazine that sought to highlight the overlooked work of female artists working at the cusp of the visual arts, music, and performance. The magazine was edited by Alison Knowles and Annea Lockwood and featured text-based and instructional performance scores by the following 25 artists, composers, and choreographers:Beth Anderon, Ruth Anderson, Jacki Apple, Barbara Benary, Sari Dienes, Nye Ffarrabas (participating …

Edition of 400. "Vinylization of the recent Home Fi cassette (originally released on the Australian Brierfirld Flood Press label) by this magnificent New Zealand singer/songwriter. We were never able to score a copy of the tape, despite the fact we released Maxine Funke's last LP, Silk (FTR 410LP), so we figured we would perform the public service of making it generally available to the whole wide world. That's just the kind of guys we are! Recorded in stark and simple terms, Home Fi represents …