Celestial Vibration
Laraaji’s sublime zither improvisation, Celestial Vibrations (1978) forms nothing less than an early archetype for new age ambient music. It was originally issued as a privately pressed meditation aid and sold in limited numbers around NYC until, that is, Brian Eno famously stumbled across Laraaji doing his thing, and the rest, as they say, is laid out in the ambient history books. That fateful meeting with Brian Eno - interestingly enough in the same year that Eno compiled the definitive …
Erosion
Mental Experience present an expanded reissue of Ildefonso Aguilar's Erosión, originally released in 1985. Spooky, meditative soundscapes inspired by the desolate volcanic environment of Lanzarote (Canary Islands), created using Minimoog, Polymoog, vocal loops, and field recordings. Originally recorded in Germany in 1978 by Spanish painter/sound artist Ildefonso Aguilar, only a selection of the original recordings were released a few years later on a very rare limited edition cassette and LP. Er…
For A World After
LP version. Includes download code. Mental Experience present the first ever reissue of Requiem's For A World After, originally released in 1981. Dark, progressive, synth ambient meets Berlin-School sounds on this obscure kraut album, which "tells the story of a world annihilation through nuclear war." For A World After is full of delayed psychedelic electric guitar, effects, cold drum machines, waves of analog keyboards (Korg MS20, Casiotone 201, Crumar DS-2, Jupiter-4), and cosmic atmosphere…
Oceanheart
"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…
Morendo Morendo - My Paris Is Called Colchester
**3LP edition of 300. All the 'pal trimmings** Itinerant radical computer musician Goodiepal presents a typically unfathomable slab of brilliance for Editions Mego. 'My Paris is Called Colchester' would appear to be Goodiepal's commission for IRCAM, Paris, mixed and recorded live during his annual show at Colchester Arts Centre. It's gotta be one of the most beguiling albums anyone will release in 2014. Across six sides Goodiepal follows a line of illest Nordic logic transporting us throu…
On the silver globe
Sofa is proud to release “On The Silver Globe” – the debut album of the duo of Kim Myhr and Lasse Marhaug. The album originated as a commission from the MetaMorf art biennale in Trondheim for the two musicians to collaborate on a 8-channel piece for the 2016 edition. The morphing of Myhr and Marhaug proved to be a good match, the two had known each other for years but never worked together, and in the process of making “On The Silver Globe” found this collaboration should be more than a one-off.…
Karpatklokke
Henrik Olsson, objects, friction, piezo. Martin Taxt, microtonal tuba, electronics. Håvard Volden, guitar, tape-loop.Muddersten is a type of mudrock whose original constituents were clays. It looks like hardened mud and, depending upon the circumstances under which it was formed, it may show cracks or fissures, like a sun-baked clay deposit. Fertile clay and fat soil, compressed, dried out and turned into stone. Still delicate flowers will find their way through its cracks and fissures, prosper …
Bite of the Orange
Robin Hayward, Microtonal F-tuba. Peder Simonsen, Microtonal C-tuba. Martin Taxt, microtonal C-tuba. Bite of the Orange is Microtub’s third album on SOFA. On ‘Bite of the Orange’ the three tuba players dig deeper into the sphere of just intonation. Robin Hayward has composed two new pieces for the group focusing on the 11th and 13th harmonics, resulting in a strong microtonal character. The canadian music critic Stuart Broomer picked Microtub as one of the highlights of the FIMAV festival inVict…
From Somewhere To Nowhere
400 copies black. French industrial music from 1987. Drawing their influences from Suicide, The Residents, Throbbing Gristle to Joy Division or Bauhaus to name a few, Urbain Autopsy their own way of combining power electronics, industrial, experimental, cold wave, post punk.
Walser
**260 copies** Walser, the new album by Robert Piotrowicz, is a reiteration of the artist’s composition for the namesake film by Zbigniew Libera where a fictitious Concheli tribe enacts its ritual gestures through music and performance. Rather than following a traditional soundtrack format where music is written after the film is cut to illustrate the cinematic form, Piotrowicz treats the film music as a point of departure to create an autonomous sound work altogether. While its aesthetic narrat…
Autoportrait
100 copies on clear vinyl. Reissue of a cassette released in 1991 by La Légende des voix. A sound self-portrait harsh and tortured also using some texts. Brume (Christian Renou) is a prolific French musique concrete composer/sound sculptor who has won himself a place of his own with his crossover between sound collages, electro-acoustics and noise. His compositions rely on dense, rapid-fire montage and wed cacophony and dynamics, emphasizing both the elements of discontinuity and continuity. Why…
Musik Fur Metropolis
LP version. Includes CD. Dieter Moebius (1944-2015) was one of the most important protagonists of avant-garde electronic music in Germany. He was a founding member of Kluster/Cluster (with Conrad Schnitzer and Hans-Joachim Roedelius) and Harmonia (with Michael Rother and Hans-Joachim Roedelius) and worked with several artists such as Brian Eno, Conny Plank, Mayo Thompson, Hellmut Hattler, Asmus Tietchens, Mani Neumeier, Arno Steffen, Jürgen Engler, Jean Hervé Peron, Zappi Diermaier, and Chris Ka…
Nattmusik
Composed and recorded by Mattias Gustafsson at Traststigen, Altar House and Lagmansskolan, Sweden, 2015–2016. Magnetic tape, vinyl, acoustic guitar, organ, voice, radio and eld recordings. Mastered by Christophe Albertijn – Studio Les Ateliers Claus. Album design and cover image by Mathieu Serruys & Joris Verdoodt.
According to the theories of Greek/Roman scientist Claudius Galenus (131–216 AD), human temperament has a direct and reactionary link to the world around us. A phlegmatic persona…
Sammlung: Elektronische Kassettenmusik, Dusseldorf 1982-1989
LP version. Post-war apartments dominated the views of Düsseldorf in the early 1980s - cement slabs, the "art bunker" known as the Kunsthalle, and the elevated railway called "The Millipede". Yet reconstruction was in full swing - bank buildings on the "Kö" received postmodern interiors, the old town became stylishly retro-rustic, and advertising agencies displaced industrial companies. Music took all of this on. Punk was finished, but its pathos drifted through pubs and shared flats. At the sam…
Magnetband: Experimenteller Elektronik-Underground DDR 1984-1989
LP version. Inspired by punk and post punk, vibrant scenes dedicated to independent self-actualization by means of self-distributed cassettes - the cheapest and fastest medium - were developing on each side of the Cold War's confrontational line. Albeit, under quite different circumstances. While there was a DIY euphoria in the West, which would also have had ideological motives, subcultures in the East simply had no other means. Even the first act of replication meant moving into illegal territ…
Bikini Tennis Shoes
*totally sold-out at source, few copies back in stock* The origins of Le Forte Four are those of the Los Angeles Free Music Society itself. Chip Chapman joined forces with Rick Potts (and shortly thereafter Tom and Joe Potts), taking up the LAFMS name in 1974. Ultimately baptizing themselves Le Forte Four, they began threading imagined lines between John Cage and The Residents, Cecil Taylor and Henry Cow – generating sounds completely unlike any of these and anything since. The inaugural release…
Eight electronic pieces
Originally self-released in 1961 and later issued by Folkways, Tod Dockstader’s Eight Electronic Pieces is a foundational document of American electronic music and astunning first work from this revolutionary composer. Refused access to the resources and funding of the academy and without any interest from the record industry, Tod Dockstader assembled his debut album through three years of his own private labor – recording after-hours at the New York radio station where he worked. Dockstader’sap…
Radiations
The fourth album of Driftmachine is not an album in the classical context, it´s a collection of new studio music, remixes of Shackleton and The Sight Below, and material previously available only in digital formats.LP limited edition of 350 copies pressed on purple colored vinyl, includes a post card with original artwork and free download coupon.
The album starts off with the surprising Shackleton remix of Radiations, a little gem gleaming with all the spacious percussions you can expect …
Cruel Optimism
Cruel Optimism is a record that considers power (present and absent). It meditates on how power consumes, augments and ultimately shapes two subsequent human conditions: obsession and fragility. This pyramid is an affective ecology of the (ever)present moment. This edition owes its title and its origins to the wonderful text of the same name by American theorist Lauren Berlant. I had the fortune to come across her writing almost a half-decade ago. In Cruel Optimism, I found a number of cri…
Tongue Tied
Oren Ambarchi and Johan Berthling are two masters of reducing music’s peak intensities to their root meaning. Oren’s early solo guitar works rendered this process with an instantly recognisable combination of sine wave throb and precisely controlled attack that has bloomed in maturity – concentrating the ecstatic potential of the guitar solo by folding it back on itself and stacking the points of greatest liminal intensity into waves of powerfully psychedelic excess while also encompassing …