Sensudestricto
Has there ever been a better time to fuck off to the stars? Is a prison breakout ‘escapism’? Crisis carve some wound-space to let the dreams back in. In nights we turn to fire, in flight we burst into stone, where are the exits in this theatre of the damned? Strict luggage allocations – guitar (David Knight), saxophone (Stephen Thrower) – and all the electronics your thoughts can carry. Headspin echoes, round and around, tilt wind-sails at a dark horizon, cut a stutter through the distance barri…
Ringing Still Life
**300 copies** Laura Mello is a Brazilian born sound artist currently based in Berlin. For her first vinyl outing she chose a double-tracked 7″, which means there are two grooves on each side, and whichever one the needle happens to end up following will determine what you hear. Two of the grooves feature ringtone-based sounds she has created over the years, the other two mix field recordings and other things in with these tones, making for a fairly chaotic (and quite lovely) racket. Pretty sure…
Conventional Wisdom
Rich, multi-layered vocal studies and shortwave electronics from avant-garde polymath John Duncan (LAFMS, collaborator with Pan Sonic, Chris & Cosey, Jim O’Rourke and countless others), bolstered by synths, drum machines and arrangements by Joachim Nordwall. Highly recommended if you’re into anything from Scott Walker and Pere Ubu to Jay Glass Dubs, Coil and Ilpo Väisänen’s classic Liima Versions. Venerable avant-garde composer John Duncan follows his prized cycle of cover versions ‘Bitter Ear…
Chemical Flowers
Luke Younger yields his most engrossing work as Helm with the sorely romantic dynamics of ‘Chemical Flowers’, his follow-up to 2015’s ‘Olympic Mess’. Bolstered by J.G. Thirlwell’s rich string arrangements, it’s a hugely ambitious work that extends from whirling, panoramic vistas to insular, pulsing dynamics, somewhere between Earth, Oren Ambarchi, Keiji Haino and Actress. Recorded in long, sustained sessions in the Essex countryside, giving him breathing room from the choke of London, ‘Chemica…
The Drought
After some serious pressing plant problems and several rejected pressings, here it is...Building from a reputation of arresting live performances and critically-acclaimed releases, Puce Mary breaks new ground with The Drought, evolving from the tropes of industrial and power electronics to forge a complex story of adapting to new realities. Remnants of noise still exist, sustaining the visceral penetration offered on previous records, however The Drought demonstrates an intention to expand on th…
Roars Bangs Booms
**150 copies** This composition by Alessandra Eramo shows for the first time a vocal interpretation of eight onomatopoetic words from the Manifesto of Futurist Music “The Art of Noises” by Luigi Russolo (1913). Alessandra Eramo creates harmonious miniatures of rough beauty and embodies urban soundscapes using her voice. Her very original approach to onomatopoeia as well as the humorous, yet profound interpretation of the original material reflects her intense exploration of sounds of industriali…
Tracing South
**300 copies** Alessandra Eramo’s new solo album "Tracing South" is a sonic enchantment through the use of extended vocal techniques, analog electronics and her hypnotic field recording of bagpipe (zampogna) during the Carnival rites in Southern Italy. She shapes mouth noises, breath, whispers, her invented languages, fragmented words, the sound of old tape recorders, handmade theremin and synth, and she creates a sound poetry composition that seems to evolve into a shamanic trance music. Polyph…
Watertube Ringspiel (Ambient Music) LP
**100 Copies in gold vinyl, few available - totally sold out at the label** Futuro Antico, the mesmerizing collaboration of Riccardo Sinigaglia with Walter Maioli and Gabin Dabirè evoked in its name the uncanniness of simultaneously witnessing past and future. Watertube Ringspiel (Ambient Music), Riccardo Sinigaglia’s first solo work – originally out on cassette from ADN Tapes in 1985— ultimately delivers on that idea, embodying different irreconcilable time frames not just in name. From our van…
Rimarimba Collection (4Lp) Second Edition
** Second Edition of 200, packaged in a large polybag with a multi-colored screenprinted cover ** Freedom To Spend’s first catalog wide deep dive into an artist’s career focuses on four albums from Rimarimba, beginning with 1983’s Below The Horizon, followed by 1984’s On Dry Land, 1985’s In The Woods, and finally, the once-imagined, now-realized assembly of 1988’s Light Metabolism Number Prague. Somewhere out there around the turn of the 1980s, to the left of the post-punk crew, to the right of …
Time Profiles
INERT/E is Lars Åkerlund (electronics) and Kasper T. Toeplitz (bass and electronics). After years of navigating in similar musical idioms - somewhere between noise, contemporary or “experimental” music – using traditional instruments as well as electronic or digital devices (Åkerlund used to be a classical guitarist, Toeplitz composed many orchestral or ensemble pieces), now they both make a large use of computers. They have worked with Dror Feiler and Zbigniew Karkowski, among others.Åkerlund a…
Viral Shedding
Originally released on Illuminated Records in 1983, "Viral Shedding" is surely one of the most important references for the industrial/funk dance music. Between pure noise and electronic beats, 'Viral Shedding' creates a twisted and percussive rhythmic urge, a funky disco sound permeated by digital industrial beats. Nigel Ayers and Caroline K take their inaccessible best and thrown it into the melting pot with a set of pumping rhythms. The result is the frustrated son of mutant disco, swimming i…
Songs of Love and Revolution
"Songs of Love and Revolution" was a big step forward for Nocturnal Emissions, having a full colour cover and turning their sound further towards electronic pop music. Classics such as "No Sacrifice" and "Never Give Up" have made this an essential album for every fan of electronic music. As Nigel Ayers reminds, they were buying lots of equipment at the time and seemed to have naturally acquired some skill over the years so they thought, ‘Let’s make some pop music.' He continues: "The Miners’ Str…
Isis and Thoth
Body Without Organs were a duo from New York City consisting of Richard Behrens (lyrics, vocals, guitar) and Carl Howard (electronics, effects) formed in 1982. The pair brought together skill and ideas from such diverse areas as writing, poetry, ceremonial magic, studio technology, and mass media sounds and images. The name Body Without Organs could mean several things: a body, being an organization, without organs, or hierarchy; a form of anarchy, certainly opposed to the capitalist system, and…
Fall of Saigon
An ephemeral trio formed at the very beginning of the '80s, Fall of Saigon take a special place within French rock. A voice (Florence Berthon), an organ (Pascal Comelade) and a guitar (Thierry Den), supported by a foregrounded drumbox, suffice to maintain a minimalist and essential construction, full of class and inventiveness. More conventionally rocky than musics recorded by Comelade in those years, although subtly peculiar, the compositions show influences marked by the New York seal. Thus th…
Music as a second language
2019 Repress. Speech melodies extracted from sources as various as language instruction recordings, hypnotists and televangelists are re-synthesized and applied to digital musical instruments, becoming eerily beautiful, "the singing of voices more ancient than language." Performed by Paul DeMarinis Hidden beneath speech's words and music's melodies I hear the singing of a voice more ancient than language. Brain's secret convulsions making muscles articulate, shaking the world with a song now lo…
Oscillations
Led by Dominique Grimaud, Vidéo-Aventures is the gathering of numerous musicians hard-to-classify, such as Gilbert Artmann andr Cyril Lefebvre… They offer a music full of references and winks to Erik Satie, Captain Beefheart and The Residents. During the Eighties, the band was noticed for its innovative use of synthesizers, in particular the famous Synthi AKS. Vidéo-Aventures even entered the charts in New Musical Express, and the following decade, their first opus was chosen as one of the twent…
In A Wild Sanctuary / Gandharva / All Good Men
A double CD collecting three classic albums from Beaver & Krause’s Warner Brothers period circa 1970-1972, featuring the celebrated Moog-friendly collaborators’ quirky mix of early electronics, found sound and musical dalliances from Blues to Soul and Rock to Gospel.Featuring the seminal “In A Wild Sanctuary” (1970), the haunting “Gandharva” (1971) and the wonky pop of “All Good Men” (1972), underlining the indelible mark the duo made on contemporary music. Filtering Scott Joplin and Bach throug…
Two Forms of Contact With Objects
Anne-Françoise Jacques is a canadian composer and performer from Quebecis. She is interested in amplification, erratic devices and construction of various contraptions and idiosyncratic systems. She is using low technology, trivial objects and rough sounds, prodused by rotation, objects and amplification, most of them are custom made. Takamitsu Ohta is a contemporary artist, Born in Osaka, Japan. He is using material from the exact place and builds his own works. By a process of transformation, …
Voice Damage
Edition of 100 hand-numbered copies. Hypnagogic raga drone electronics and mutating, distorted rhythms from L.A.-based experimental musician Byron Westbrook, yielding two compatible improvisations that have stood the test of time in his archive. RIYL David Behrman, M Geddes Gengras, Matt Carlson. Nearly all of my recorded music is pieced together from organized edits of various improvisations of some sort, via a composition process that generally involves cut/paste and superimposing those to a p…
Six Tableaux De Quelpaert
Limited edition of 200 copies in risograph covers. Jeju is a volcanic island in the East China Sea somewhere between Japan and Shanghai, south of the Korean peninsula. After a long period of being an autonomous and matriarchal society, it nowadays belongs to South Korea. Women play an important role on the island and enjoy a special status. This matriarchal tradition among other things manifestates in the culture of the legendary Haenyeo – female divers for shellfish, octopus, fish et al. Two ye…