Journey to the light
"Recorded in Northern California in 1984 and released in a micro edition by the Creative Sound imprint in January of the following year, Mark Banning’s Journey to the Light is a lost gem of private issue New Age music, an impossible-to-find album that is more spoken about than heard and deserves to be recognized alongside established classics of the genre. Incorporating processed electric guitar, zither, voice and field recordings, it is unabashedly beautiful music—two side-long pieces that feel…
Club Music
The Diagonal dynamo returns to his label on a combustible trio of 'Club Music' trax, including a crackshot collaboration with Russell Haswell. Powell's first 12" for the label since 2012's 'Body Music' arrives a year since his 'Fizz' 12" for Liberation Technologies and a killer for The Death Of Rave - with a couple of scintillating remixes for Ike Yard and Silent Servant in between - to mark his clearest, canniest statement of intent, wrenching ideas twoc'ed from New Beat, Hardcore Jungle, Post-…
An Anthology Of Noise & Electronic Music - Vol 1
Subtitled: First A-Chronology 1921-2001. At last, the Sub Rosa label re-issues the highly-acclaimed Anthology Of Noise & Electronic Music collection. Containing early and contemporary classics as well as pieces that had never been heard before. Volume 1 begins in the 1920s with the Russolo brothers, and examines each decade in turn -- Varèse, Cage, Schaeffer, Xenakis, the great pioneers crafting the first traces of a music that was markedly revolutionary: electronic music, created from no…
Split Animal Sculpture
Infinite Greyscale presents a new long-form composition by Jan St. Werner, Split Animal Sculpture, a companion piece to the artist’s ongoing Fiepblatter series on Thrill Jockey, Jan St. Werner (Mouse on Mars, Lithops, Microstoria, Von Südenfed) has been at the forefront of forward thinking electronic music for over twenty years. As an artist concerned primarily with sound as a sculptural material, St. Werner has also exhibited his work in museums and his numerous collaborators include Rosa Barba…
Two shadows
Migrations In Rust is Jesse Allen. As a member of the Red Light District collective in Queens, NY (which has included some of the best in modern experimental musicians such as Yellow Tears, Pharmakon, John Mannion, Diaphragm, DJ Dog Dick and a slurry of other side projects, solo projects and collaborations), former member of the Cathode Terror Secretion and current performer in Cowards, in addition to producing and performing under the guise of several other solo projects (Hollow Seed, Goldeater…
Histrionic
The inimitable Estonian ex-pat takes inspiration from current hood, Brooklyn, in the darker, beguiling pop contours of her 3rd album proper. The challenging yet gratifying arrangements of 'Histrionic' are testament to both her consistency as a boundary-pushing artist, and an enduring belief in the role of pop music as a model for incisive cultural commentary and observation. Her sound here is more layered, spacious than previously heard, yet denser than ever, crammed with uncanny lyrical observ…
Temple Room
Matt Hill aka Umberto returns to the spectre of 'Temple Room' from his 'Prophecy Of The Black Widow' (2010) album for extended and alternative dancefloor versions. On the extended version he's doubled the track length, giving himself more time to tease out the kinky disco vibes with camp, Jamie Principle-esque synth runs and, whilst the Silvio mix locks into a stompng, Hi-NRG wiggle.
World Arena
The West Coast’s weirdest hidden-treasure trio, Bronze, have plied their molten composite of serpentine metro-gnomic drumming, oscillator raga, hash-oil free verse, and pendulum bass patterns for seven shaded years, but sonic documentation remains sparse. The new decade, thankfully, has seen them reversing this deficit, first with 2011’s Copper LP, and now with World Arena, which unfolds another octagon’s worth of their signature spellbound, smoke-ringed, psych-fusion explorations. Tracked at th…
Lowlife
Eclectic selection running from midnight jazz moods to swinging house and dusted downbeats. As much as Los Angeles gleams in the global mind as a gateway to dream fulfillment and televised wealth / fame amalgams, it’s equally a desert of disappointments. Hence the dead-end yoga cults, under-the-bridge tar dealers, valley burnouts, Inland Empire night-stalkers and seas of destitute Eastside lowlifes. This vibe is central to Afterhours’s languid, nocturnal musical vision, which has evolved from sl…
City of Sweat
German steamroom wrecking crew LX Sweat returns from a winter of festival dates and self-symbiosis to lay out an impressively realized full-length debut of voidist club fantasia, equal parts Screw bootlegs, slow-jack synth freestyle, and degraded phaser wash. City of Sweat spirals through a judgement night of weird, codeined lust, luxury hallucinations, overdosed syrup rituals, and long, blurry nights stumbling home through alleys in the rain. Like last year’s Sweat Sweat Sweat cassette, this ne…
Draught
Earle and Sussmann are best known for their minimal electronic work as Stasis Duo but this disc sees them in far more bracing mode for this all electronics trio. Recorded while Kahn was touring Australia in 2009. Matt Earle works with blank media including samplers, mixers, turntables and tapedecks. He has a solo project under the name Muura, and plays in the groups Stasis Duo and Xwave (with Adam Sussmann), xNoBBQx and Sun of the Seventh Sister. He also runs the Breakdance the Dawn record label…
What's That For, Mate?
* Hand-numbered edition of 100 in recycled cardstock sleeve with envelope. * Recorded in March 2010, What's that for, mate? Is one of the first recordings the duo (Jack Harris & Samuel Rodgers) made together. At this time the two worked with a combination of no-input and acoustic feedback, digital processing and phonography. This recording sees a discourse resulting from the amalgamation of and conflict between the analogue and the digital, the gestural and the static, and multiple recorded spac…
Impermeability
Improviser and composer Laurent Peter - one half of Diatribes, co-ordinator of the Insub Meta Orchestra and co-curator of the Insubordinations label - has been a important figure in the Swiss Experimental scene for some years now. This new solo composition, although assembled from studio recordings, conjures gurgling volcanic pools, teeming with myriad amphibians and insects.
Oera
Recorded in the small Norwegian town of Øra, from which the album takes its name, this meeting of two acoustic string instruments belies the simplicity of its instrumentation through the complexity and diversity of the music produced. Ranging from careful melodic a/tonal interplay to dense full spectrum harmonics, capturing the versatility and inventiveness of these musicians.
Quasi static crack Ppropagation
Brussels-based sound artist Yann Leguay is a true media saboteur. He appropriates industrial machinery for the playback of musical media (using an angle grinder to perform the live destruction of a microphone or to playback a CD at dizzying speed) with flagrant disregard for the accepted norms of audio behaviour. His back catalogue is equally deviant, releasing a 7” single without a central hole and a record composed from recordings of vinyl being scratched by scalpel. His Phonotopy label propos…
De Overkant
Gosh this is lovely - a suite of spellbinding ambient folk meditations from Timo Van Luijk, the boss of Belgium's exquisite Metaphon label. A regular collaborator with the likes of Andrew Chalk, Raymond Dijkstra, and Christoph Heeman, among others, Timo operates at the core of Belgium's current avant-garde and experimental circles. Produced and released under his Af Ursin alias on the La Scrie Dorée label set up for such purposes, 'De Overkant' is a disarmingly quiet and mysterious suite of frag…
Seven Inches Vol. 3
Fratto9 under the sky and Kinky Gabber present the third volume of the “seven inch series”, a series of coloured 7inches in limited and numbered edition that Luminance Ratio shares with different international artists and musicians. While the first volume of this series, released a year ago, involved the American musician/artist Steve Roden (almost sold out now), and the second volume features the Australian artist Oren Ambarchi, this volume includes an innovative track with voice and charming m…
Vobes
Beneath pulls up to PAN with a super forward platter of UK bass/techno dreadnaughts. Combining archival rolige with up-to-the-minute missiles, PAN's 51st release operates at the crucial nexus of dubwise dancehall science and minimalist techno, pairing uniquely sculpted rhythm dynamics with a filigree feel for aerated electronic timbre. Most importantly it's aimed squarely at the 'floor with 20" rimmed riddims bound to bounce any stack, but it's his taste for spectral, holographic electronic mode…
Intrigue & Stuff Volumes 1-4
All Four Volumes of Intrigue & Stuff available as a limited edition set, all four volumes pressed on clear vinyl and including an instant download of all volumes - 19 tracks!
Intrigue & Stuff Vol.4
James Leyland Kirby returns with an uncompromising, poetic and unexpected 4th and final instalment of his long-dormant 'Intrigue & Stuff' series despatched from his new base in Krakow for his own History Always Favours The Winners label. Since we last heard from the provocateur he's issued brilliant albums as The Caretaker and The Stranger, a cracking 12" for his formative heroes R&S/Apollo, and marked his 40th Birthday last week with a 40-track album of Piano pieces...yet we can't help but feel…