Electronic / All styles

After hard and insisting work to revitalise the art of instrument bashing Golden Serenades has turned towards newer hunting grounds: the Organ. The queen of instruments - or more specifically the instrument as it sounds in the hands of organ master Sigbjørn Apeland - is the starting point for GS´s sonic experiments on "Hammond Pops". The result is a drone piece of highest quality. Slowly deveolping, massive sound breaking in and out of the source material from the organ. Always moving tow…

Lemur presents their latest position in the quest for a new improvised chamber music: Acoustic sound-oriented music from four highly original players. ”Aigéan” is Lemur’s awaited follow-up of the acclaimed debut ”IIIIIIII” from two years ago. Continuing their work to develop an improvised chamber music with an emphasis on sonic experimentation and ensemble character, the ensemble delivers a darker and more fragile album. More open to explore the particulars in each piece, the ensemble see…

Daniel Menche has established himself as a musician with a sense of focus and determination uncharacteristic in a genre known for its randomness and chaotic structure.Rather than creating 'noise,' he strives for order and cohesiveness. His presentation of sonic structures is similar to the way a writer depicts a story, an allegory seems to arise, which uses confusion as a symbol for the imaginative process of total sound purity; aural intensity is not a representation of confusion or the chaotic…

This real masterpiece of Concrète and Synthesized music was no more available since its original manufacture in 1973. Dub Taylor is an US composer, producer, engineer and designer born June 22, 1948 in Burbank, California. He has many creative facets: recording and mastering engineer, record producer as well as composer, graphic designer and visual artist. He has studied with pianist Richard Bunger and composer Karlheinz Stockhausen. Not long after the release of Lumière, Taylor established Varg…

Hand-numbered edition of 300 copies art edition set that features a 10” on clear vinyl, a CD and an accompanying art book/manifesto from this obscure Japanese/South African avant garde performance troupe. Reputedly starting off in 1976 through tape experiments at home, much of Ellende’s work is based on the writings of founder member Wim Bontjes, who passed away in 1995 and if the contents of the booklet are anything to go by they share a healthy obsession with sex, ritual and radical per…

To Describe George Washington Bridge is Stephan Mathieu’s 2nd Dekorder release in the 10inch format (reflecting his interest in old 78rpm records) after 2009’s sold out The Key to the Kingdom, and, we’re happy to say, again it features two of the composer’s most outstanding short pieces. Both are recorded utilizing similar methods as used on his most recent album “A Static Place” on 12k yet they are presented in an even more condensed and melodic way. As source material he used transcript…

Mohammad is the project of: Coti K.: double bass, Ilios: oscillators, Nikos Veliotis: cello Having worked separately in the experimental field they decided to join forces in order to study and work on the principles of inter-modulation. Roto Vildblomma is the first Antifrost release on 2010 and the debut of Mohammad. CD comes in cardboard pack, in an edition of 400 copies.

Limited edition of 320 copies, mastered and cut by LUPO at D&M. Includes free download code for FLAC or MP3 redeemable from the label** John Chantler offers his most substantial solo recordings in over seven years. Housed in lustrous, silk-screened sleeve, 'The Luminous Ground' glows with a deeply instinctive feel for bewildering, alien harmonics and psychoactivated tunings arising from processes of modular synthesis. A pulsing and glimmering collision of oscillated tone, filtered texture…

Restocked: Kassel Jaeger lives and works in Paris. He’s a member of the GRM (Groupe de Recherches Musicales). ‘algae’ is the follow-up of ‘aerae’ (senufo edition # five) and continues the author’s research on possible intersections of instrumental improvisations and field recordings. Focused at the same time on microphone placement and elaboration of metastable sound states, ‘algae’ develops series of interlacing soundwaves which evolve like tidal movements and leave, here and there, inanimate o…

Awesome record, exactly as good as you’d expect it to be (Keith Fullerton Withman) "While Oren Ambarchi and Jim O’Rourke have collaborated in a number of forms, from remixes to their acclaimed trio with Keiji Haino, Indeed  is their first duo album. One long electro-acoustic exploration (presented here as two side-long pieces), what Ambarchi and O’Rourke proffer up here is also melodic and approachable, bringing to mind the warm post-minimalism of composers like Alvin Curran, David Behrman and L…

he Spectrum Spools nu-kosmische world domination is truly upon us this week with a corking Bee Mask Album and this blinder from Temporal Marauder who consist of Jean Logarin, Hans Schule, Lissa Zukovich and Max Tanguy and together they make a glorious cyberdelic racket packed to the rafters with bubbling synths with all sorts of tranced out meandering bleeps, pulses, neon sine waves and even some more fucked up techno sounds. It opens sounding like Can being fronted by R2D2 and then morp…

First LP release from this new stephen o’malley-run editions mego sub-label, offering a good hour-plus of low-end growling from this russian quintet  the parallels between the mono-chord / chromatic stasis on display here & that of sunn o))) are myriad.This voyage began in the middle of the 1990's in Moscow, when a group of artists and musicians led by Alexei Tegin and based at the legendary Fabrique of Cardinal Art commenced their studies of traditional ritual music, drifting away from the fiel…

CD edition: For the last few years, Chris Madak has been on a tangled and cryptic path toward the full realization of his Bee Mask alterego. Now, for the first time there seems to be light at the end of the tunnel - a chance for old plans to come to fruition and for new ideas to blossom into the unknown. "Elegy for Beach Friday" is a personal selection of highlights from a slew of limited cassette and CDr editions recorded between 2003 and 2010, reimagined, reedited, and remastered, offe…

Suishou no Fune originated in Tokyo's fertile psychedelic scene. After landing a spot on PSF's Tokyo Flashback 5 and releasing Where the Spirits Are in 2006, the group ventured out from Japan and took every opportunity to play across the United States and Europe. During one of these trips in the spring of 2007, the group-- down to the crucial duo of Pirako and Kurenai-- went into a recording studio for a few days and laid down these massive new tracks. Prayer for Chibi might be the ultimate Suis…

Good news from your mailbox! Mitterer makes music on the subject of ambient in an electronic environment. Two amazing CDs with radical backgrounds.Mitterer’s CD in hand is about background music as a relative term, it’s about communicating via ›electronic post‹, it’s about the missing link between analog and digital ambient environments. Because Mitterer creates his instruments and then uses them in a unique way, electronic music for him has a unique vocabulary, one which in this day and age of …

few copies available, now out of print. Attention Patterns is a 2 LP + 48 page booklet set featuring new and archival compositions by Pauline Oliveros, Eliane Radigue,Yoshi Wada and Sun Circle, as well as interviews with the composers, scores and related texts. This release brings together composers with shared affinities for long, slowly unfolding durations and unconventional, harmonic approaches to tuning. Each has contributed a full LP side to the compilation. Oliveros’ “Horse Sings from Clou…

2011 release ** "In August 2010, Maurizio Bianchi officially announced his retirement from musical scene. "Apokalypsis XXIII" is his last ever electronic music album, recorded in Summer of 2010. All the latest albums appeared after that are in fact re-issues of older works or the collaborations with other artists using his sound sources. Like other solo albums of Maurizio Bianchi, "Apokalypsis XXIII" has religious roots and consists of four long tracks, each of those divided into further section…

Ahead of their time, the enigmatic Italian band A.t.r.o.x. were one of the first bands to move beyond the new wave styles and introduce strong electronic elements, an abstract-minimal heart attack in the best possible way. Lovely double CD set with their entire production.

on yellow vinyl! All string synths and spring reverb, this is an analog dream. Nothing less than some of the finest classically-orchestrated synthetic pop of the thirty odd years people have been attempting it.

Turntablist and concrète composer eRikm is one of the more readily recognisable names contributing to the revelatory Entr'acte label, and his disc Lux Payllettes is a typically excellent work. Stretching out over a thirty-minute-plus duration, the Marseille-based composer cuts and layers a huge variety of sounds cultivated from the sonic idioms of Western cinema. A bracing and immersive collage of fractured soundtracks, dislocated foley work and strange re-combinations, Lux Payllettes comes high…

MIMEO is an electronic music orchestra of 10 to 11 musicians. The instruments range from analogue (Thomas Lehn) and digital synthesizers (Marcus Schmickler), amplified objects and old analogue equipment (Gert-Jan Prins) to software designed especially for improvisation Phil Durrant); the line up varies from improvisers who started in 60's (Keith Rowe) to younger genereation of electronic musicians (Christian Fennesz); its aesthetics is floating from space-jazz (Rafael Toral) to noise (Pet…

This sensation that you are in a world where there can be no physics, but only a chronics, of things. Editions Mego and Urbanomic are pleased to announce the release of ‘Speculative Solution’, a CD and book with contributions by Florian Hecker, Elie Ayache, Robin Mackay and Quentin Meillassoux. Originally commissioned by Urbanomic and developed over the last year, this collaborative project brings together Hecker’s sonic practice and psychoacoustic experimentation with philosopher Quentin Meilla…

For slugabed’s duration, Veliotis and Filip seem to always be seeking an equilibrium, never comfortable with the one they’re currently nestled in. Despite this fickle dynamic, the music is never inpatient, nor worried. Like the drunk donkey (? horse?) depicted on its cover, slugabed is utterly comfortable with its languid meandering.Those familiar with Veliotis’ music, whether composed or improvised, probably have an idea what this meeting sounds like. A drone-based improvisation, slugabed resem…

Outstanding!!! La vie en prose is Michel Chion's first musical work composed in the 2000s. Thanks to musique concrète ways and means, it fulfils the composer's childhood dream of composing a Symphony of Energy in four movements of sharp contrasts. There’s no narrative in this one hour and a half long Symphony, but a cast of characters, some vocal, instrumental themes and sounds that circulate, disappear, pop up, stretch, decline and lose themselves in time. This work features analogue and digita…

In January 2011 Mark was invited by Erik Wiegand (aka Errorsmith) to make some presets for his new software synthesizer which he was building for Native Instruments. After developing about 40 sounds*, Mark decided to rework his UL8 project by extending the pattern generating systems used in its construction, which he then connected to the sounds produced in Erik's synthesizer. The result is this double 12" single, featuring 9 tracks and a remix from Mark's friend and colleague Mat Steel. …

First instalment in this new o series providing a long overdue and much needed vinyl-only glimpse into Jim O'rourke's electronic/synth music archive* 'Old News No.5' introduces a "nearly regular series of vinyl albums documenting analog synth and tape works (both studio and live) from the depths of Jim O'Rourke's archive, spanning a near quarter of a century in the field." Side A 'Pedal & Pedal' features 15 minutes recorded at Super Deluxe, Tokyo, 2010. It unfurls a series of tender pasto…

Not Not Fun label-mate Xander Harris has released “Urban Gothic,” the most overtly Carpenter-influenced modern electronic album to date. While Harris cites a laundry list of influences, new and old, it is Carpenter’s distinctly chilly synth-based sound that is most evident here. Although just as Umberto and Ensemble Economique mixed an array of genres ranging from African tribal music to disco into their reimagining of the horror soundtrack, Harris also draws inspiration from 80s synth pop and d…

This is pure cosmic and immersive nektar!!!!!! "Categories cannot contain Shinji Masuko. He's the founder of DMBQ - one of Japan's greatest modern psychedelic bands, a respected music and comic reviewer, an astonishing guitarist and a master guitar builder. He's also been a member of the Boredoms since 2004, having designed and built their notorious seven neck guitar (the Sevena) while acting as the band's principle guitarist.The idea for this record, Masuko's first solo work, was born during pr…

Way out in the North West American wilderness, Evan Caminiti (Barn Owl) and Lisa McGee regroup for another exceptional, ethereal session as Higuma. 'Pacific Fog Dreams' is also their 2nd release for Root Strata, following their earliest collaborative release in '08 with 'Haze Valley', and 2010s 'Den Of The Spirits' LP for Digitalis, one of the finest of its ilk in recent years. Their sound is incredibly precious and achieves the rarest of tangible sensations with glooming, ghostly drones and bil…

Golden times for the krautrock lovers and kosmische musik worshippers. Jonas Reinhardt is a San Francisco unit revolving around Germanic electronic synthesis and forging new beautiful soundscapes from the material pioneered by the Teutonic masters. The hermetic kosmische lexicon (in ashra tempel/Cluster vein I'd say) of San Francisco-based synth synthesist/composer has been simmering and swelling at a steady clip the past few years (2010's Powers Of Audition was a highlight), but the added talen…

Tracks:
Side A - civil / headless / lo v / wiped out / closest
Side B - break bone / end flux / without one / civilizationRecorded live 2009-Present, various locations, Los Angeles, CA.Tearist: Yasmine Kittles, William StrangelandCover Photograph: Olivia Crawford
Sound/Visual Design, Production: Peter Kolovos, William Stangeland
Vinyl Mastering: Pete Lyman at Infrasonic SoundLimited edition high quality vinyl in full color & hand-letterpressed heavy tip-on jacket.

VHF is releasing a bunch of solo guitar dudes over the next few weeks. Here's one of 'em! It's an album from New York's Alexander Turnquist called Hallway of Mirrors. It says that above so it's kinda pointless me saying that. Having said that the New York thing was a new bit of info so it's not all filler! I've not heard this chap before but I was rather taken with him on first listen. It's not a million miles away from the likes of James Blackshaw.... ie extreme 12 string fingerpluckery which i…

After 2 full-lengths mining vintage horror scores and Italo/Goblin-isms for inspiration, Kansas City riddler and composition whiz Umberto slow-pans his focus out of the graveyards and black widow cobwebs into the celluloid-stained artificial streets of Beverly Hills police beats and pop culture ghost-busting. Freeze! is an inscrutable but impressively legit reinvention of Jan Hammer-style 80’s soundtrack cheese: soaring keyboard lines, fast-tappin’ piano, locked-in bass grooves, goofy canned dru…

With their recent split with Naked on the Vague acting as a dip into pop's waters; Wet Hair's follow up, In Vogue Spirit is practically a jump into the pool. The band's most accessible batch of tunes to date boil with Krautrock rhythms, buzzing synths, and a new focus on vocals that has previously been mostly absent in the band's back catalog. It's not all motion and melody here though, the band still retains their experimental spirit, giving the record plenty of teeth to sink into any of …

Wet Hair heads Shawn Reed and Ryan Garbes have been jamming sideways strains of long-lensed electricity music for years now, but their trajectories as visual artists arc back even farther. So after a small infinity of J-cards and zines and LP sleeves designs, it’s a real pleasure to finally be able to present a preferential suite of some of their finest (and, till now, unseen) compositions in a glossy, full-color, pro-printed 22-panel art volume, bookended by a brand new black vinyl 33 RPM singl…

2011 release ** "A collection of fascinating and obscure "nocturnal sessions” alternated with more "classic" electronic parts based on sequencers and synthesizers, more abstract and minimal sonic sketches, involving and tense deep drones musical mixtures, distorted and dilated electric guitars, deformed human voices, more static and fluctuating typical ambient movements, cold inserts of pulsating and "techno oriented" sounds, suggestive atmospheres built on bizarre loops, flat organ backgrounds …

A single, long, deeply moving, slow and expanded drone-track, built on everchanging sonic masses, low frequencies, strong electric/electronic sounds, field recordings, feedbacks, buzzes, hisses, rough distortions, sunken organ chords, subdued inserts of strings orchestral parts. Alternation of progressive crescendos, ambiental stasis, sudden, dramatic and catching dynamic shocks... An involving and extraordinary "trip" across an obscure sonic path, convincingly assembled in collaborative form by…

Thick and spectral dark ambient, soaked with soft and flowing pads stratifications, wrapped in deep and penetrating low frequencies spires, enlightened by delicate and touching melodic inserts, profaned by echoes of reverberating metallic noises, clanging chains, circular mechanical movements, waves of indecipherable whispers, distant and suffering human voices... A great debut CD for Antikatechon, a project that showcases Davide Del Col's eclectic personality, already the unique mind of the Orn…

Extended sonic fluxes of synthetic nature mixed with delicate acoustic and electric guitars chords and riffs, crowd noises, indefinite and fading melodic "spots" of unknown origin, feedbacks, echoes, pulsations, vibrations, cracklings, rustling waves in continuous movement... But also sudden pauses, unpredictable and improbable inserts of folk blues radio transmissions, crystal clear water sounds, static, wrapping and dramatic electronic weaves, metallic tickings... An extraordinary range of sou…

Rhys Chatham has trail-blazed a course through late 20th century music, equally aplomb in post-minimalist composition as he is in punk. Not since Roebling laid his span across the East River has there been an artist who builds bridges in both how we hear music and how we can appreciate art. His latest album, Outdoor Spell, is a further document in that direction. Here has has eschewed 100 guitars, or even himself playing a single guitar, for the trumpet and voice, both electrified and dry. It is…