Tristes Tropiques
** 2021 Repress ** Tristes Tropiques' – named after & dealing with Claude Lévi-Strauss' landmark ethnographic writing of the same name – is an album of "synthetic exotica & pseudo-ethnographic music". Sounding like the field recording from an imaginary landscape, Tristes Tropiques deals with the meaning of Exotica & ethnographic recordings (without using them) as well as with cultural categories like "Otherness". As smart as it is, it's also totally stunning, free-floating music, RIYL Dolphins I…
Sounds From Phantom Islands
** 2021 Repress ** Faitiche presents a new album by Andrew Pekler: Sounds From Phantom Islands brings together ten tracks created over the last three years for the interactive website Phantom Islands - A Sonic Atlas.With his 2016 album Tristes Tropiques, Pekler created a highly unique cosmos of ethnographic sound speculations. Sounds From Phantom Islands continues and simultaneously expands this concept: finely elaborated chordal motifs float like fog over fictional maritime landscapes. A master…
Elevation
** Edition of 300. White vinyl in screenprinted pvc sleeve ** Zaumne's new album titled Élévation is a multifaceted yet subtle work, an abstract collage that is equally entrancing and immersive. Quoting passages from Baudelaire’s “Flowers of Evil”, the Polish musician promises to elevate the soul and consciousness “Beyond the sun / Beyond the ether”. Yet simultaneously, the artist wants us to stay where we are and focus on the immediate surroundings in search of our personal attachment to the wo…
PRSNT
The LP contains original compositions by Ryuichi Sakamoto, Pascal Comelade, Laurie Spiegel, Lyra Pramuk, Chassol, Nicolas Godin and Pierre Rousseau, Pedro Vian and Pierre Bastien, Visible Cloaks, Kelman Duran, Raul Refree, Lucrecia Dalt, Lafawndah. + writings by contemporary thinkers like Shumon Basar, François J. Bonnet, and pictures by Wolfgang Tillmans, Juergen Teller, Araki, Elizaveta Porodina, Dani Pujalte, P Jack Davison, Zhong Lin, Alessandra Sanguinetti, Adrià Cañameras, Javier Tles amo…
Rakka II
In 2020 Cosmo Rhythmatic released ‘Rakka,’ which presented Sasu Ripatti’s glorious return to his most famous alias: Vladislav Delay. Nonetheless, the album contents made it evident that this eventual comeback was not intended as a revival. Ripatti was reactivating the project and a steadfast evolution in its sound, a new approach to both the emotional and environmental characteristics of electronic composition. The inspiration for this new course was given to Ripatti by a series of ventures into…
Motto of The Wheel
Teresa Winter returns with a definitive new album of lush, feverish rave mutations, dream-pop and ambient noise that’s highly recommended if yr feeling Cosey, A.R. Kane, A Guy Called Gerald, Laila Sakini.
Soft Eyes
Quietly stunning, sensitive songcraft by boundary-pushing avant gardist John Duncan on a starkly haunting and timelessly beautiful new album of observations on society and intimacy, featuring Eiko Ishibashi, Stefano Pilia and friends, and highly recommended if yr feeling Scott Walker, Keiji Haino, Jandek, Tom Waits, Mark Lanegan, David Thomas & Two Pale Boys.
Enter Outside
** Limited to 100 LPs, comes with a two-sided insert and download code ** In recent years, Ned Milligan has pursued composition almost exclusively through chimes and cassette tape. Emphasizing live performance, this music was defined by equal parts improvisation and careful curation. His new LP, Enter Outside, demonstrates the tonal and textural qualities found on those recordings while expanding his palette with the inclusion of a singing drum. The title of this album--which can be interpreted…
Introduction to an Apology
** Limited to 100 LPs, comes with a two-sided insert and download code ** The hallmark of Jason Calhoun's music--either under his given name or under the naps alias--is an emotional resonance that allows fragility and perseverance to occupy the same space. Though humble in his approach, calhoun has done something quietly extraordinary in building a body of work that, unlike so much music that seeks to transport you elsewhere, instead asks you to check in with yourself. Recent cassette releases …
Return to Solaris
Acclaimed UK electronic musician Kevin Richard Martin (The Bug, King Midas Sound) releases a stunningly powerful rescore of Andrei Tarkovsky’s seminal 1972 movie Solaris on Phantom Limb.
MMXX Complete Bundle
The Complete Bundle of Matière Mémoire's incredible MMXX Series - commissioning 20 artists to produce 20-minute works to be issued across 2020 - is a truly stunning body of sound. Comprising of brand-new works by Phill Niblock, Kassel Jaeger, Stephen O'Malley, Hampus Lindwall, and Mauro Lanza - each issued on single sided crystal-clear vinyl, with a laser engraved artwork on the other, accompanied by a print created by the artist - stand among the most exciting records we've heard all year.
Nebula - MMXX-20
Shiva Feshareki is a British-Iranian experimental composer and turntabist, noted for solo efforts, as well as her work alongside classical orchestras. Her only full-length to date, New Forms, issued by Resist back in 2019, makes her contribution to the MMXX series, Nebula, a much-needed expansion of her available works.Deploying the turntable with a stunningly skilled hand, Nebula is a work of orchestral scale made from the most minimal means. Merging a vast number of heavily manipulated sound-s…
1883 - Sound Model I - MMXX-19
Predominately working as a film director and visual artist, since the late 2000s Carlos Casas has occupied a remarkable double life with his work in sound, producing a handful of full lengths and EPs over the last ten years that span the worlds of musique concrète, electronic, electroacoustic, and ambient musical composition.Casas’s contribution to the MMXX series, 1883 - Sound Model I - his second release with Matière Mémoire - is an uncanny electroacoustic composition that incorporates field r…
Komora - MMXX-18
Bérangère Maximin is a fascinating figure on the French experimental electronic music scene. Having studied electroacoustic composition under Denis Dufour, since her move to Paris in the early 2000s she developed a highly individualized practice of acousmatic composition, creating tape works for dance and experimental cinema, as well as a small, carefully crafted discography that has appeared across highly regarded imprints like Tzadik, Sub Rosa, and Made To Measure, among others.Maximin’s contr…
Before It Gets Better, It Will Get Worse - MMXX-17
A deft hand with a long history within the brooding realms of ambient, electronic, and electroacoustic music, since emerging on the Swedish scene during the 1990s, Joachim Nordwall has cut a wide path, not only with a stunning body of solo work and collaborative efforts with Mika Vainio, John Duncan, Mats Gustafsson, and numerous others, but also through his highly regarded label iDEAL Recordings.Nordwall’s contribution to the MMXX series, Before It Gets Better, It Will Get Worse, is a remarkabl…
Viscount Gort - MMXX-16
In our small corner of the world, Oren Ambarchi needs little introduction. He is among the most important and prolific figures within the contemporary landscape of experimental music. First appearing as a drummer on the free jazz scene in Sydney, Australia, during the mid-1980s, by the 1990s Ambarchi had followed the gravity of an intense creative curiosity, subsequently reemerging as visionary electroacoustic pioneer focussed largely on the guitar.With a small group of peers, he helped spawn a …
Cylene Suisse Redux
Cylene Suisse Redux documents François J. Bonnet and Stephen O'Malley's Switzerland tour in December 2019, following the release of their first album, Cylene. The two musicians chose to entrust sound material recorded on the tour to the expert ears of two friends and great musicians Jim O'Rourke and Ryoji Ikeda, giving them carte blanche, and each in turn chose a distinct personal approach. For Ryoji Ikeda, it was a question of finding a moment, circumscribing a fragment of time through his list…
Cut off from the World
Nick Forte debuts new project Half Mortal for Hospital Productions. While Forte's previous discography spans the majority of extreme music subcultures, going as far back as 1990, Half Mortal is his first project conceived as 'death metal electronics'. Expansive and maximal yet possessing spaciousness, and with a flair for technical violence, forte is a master of dynamics and uses IDM and the ill-fated death metal intro almost as bookends. Without a shred of retro nostalgia, this record dissolves…
Black Crows Cyborg
** Barbed Wire Swimming Pool splatter vinyl. LP with super deluxe embossed cover with mini poster ** The skylines of Tokyo and New York City are impenetrable. On the streets it is cold - the ravens have blocked out the sun. The barbed chicken wire that surrounds the cities wave scraps of plastic shreds of circuit boards like surrender flags. Ravens have become the society, they are now the rulers. Black Crows Cyborg is the first collaboration from noise titans Merzbow and Prurient. With more tha…
Emerging Threshold
Sébastien Robert strikes an emotive and explorative tone on his debut album Emerging Threshold, layering field recordings and swathes of synthesis, touching upon kosmische musik, but in modern and updated form