Visible Breath
Eyvind Kang tremendous efforts on Sunn O)))'s Monoliths & Dimensions album helped elevate the group's presence to a new level creatively and aesthetically. We were fortunate and perhaps even destined to have this crossing. During this period Kang also premiered the pair of pieces presented on side A of this album, 'Visible Breath' and 'Monodology.' I was fortunate to witness an ensemble concert of these compositions titled 'Grass' in Seattle which featured many of the same amazing musicia…
Electronic Noise Improvisation 1999
After spending the first half of the 1970s globetrotting with Asia's premiere avant-garde band--Takehisa Kosugi's Taj Mahal Travellers (where Seiji Nagai played trumpet and keyboards)--Nagai continued to study and play music, particularly Indian music (drones) and electronic/computer generated music. In 1999 he finally released Electronic Noise Improvisation, with the help of Koichi Watanabe, Koji Kawai and Minoru Yonemoto. Here, as in the days of TMT, Nagai concentrates on creating dense …
Strings
A sublime constellation of sound miniatures divided into 3 long tracks (at once random and simultaneous) of delicate field recordings and found objects transformed and woven into intricate electronic tapestries, a slowly building "ambient" work with a unique sense of melancholy. Stefano Pilia's Strings is a diary composition began in 2004, a series of subtle epiphanies followed by a somewhat enigmatic resolve or 'answers', richly spacious explorations that appears suspended in time, with distan…
Superdisque
Superdisque is the first album from the French trio formed by David Fenech (electric guitar) with Jac Berrocal (trumpet) and Ghédalia Tazartès (vocals). Somewhere beyond the borders of rock, jazz, punk and sound poetry -- the vocals seem to come from another planet, with lyrics in an improvised language. The winds are blown from Tibetan human bones and conch seashells. Guitars sound like rubber and steel. Expect the unexpected. Special guest Zap Pascal (accordion) appears on one track. Dav…
In Faxfleet Clouds Uplifted Autumn Gave Passage To Kind Nature
Originally released on vinyl in the summer of last year, and presented as an extended play single, these three pieces total less than 25 minutes, and while the collaborators have chosen to present the recordings in these versions, the fade-outs suggest there's more to them than what we're given.
There's a lot of movement in the stillness here. The faint rhythms on "Queen of Heaven" are only a backdrop to the very prominent sustained layers of keyboards and almost inaudibly low frequency ba…
Strange And Secret Things
Robert Haigh should be a name familiar to more intrepid record buyers of the 1980's. I discovered his EPs on L.A.Y.L.A.H. Anti-Records in the bins of Tower Records, where the label name associated his music with purveyors of sonic perversity such as Nurse With Wound, Organum, Current 93, Coil, and The Hafler Trio. In fact it was in their company that I first heard his music tucked between those very artists on "The Fight Is On" compilation, oddly enough with a solo piano piece. It seemed out …
Ghost of Nakhodka
Here's the cd reissue of a 2009 cassette from the emissary of British dronemusik, Andrew Chalk. That cassette, like this cd version, had been released by the Japanese imprint Siren Records, although it seems that Chalk himself did all of the printing as with all of his Faraway Press productions. So, it certainly looks as lovely as it sounds. The album opens with a 22 minute abstraction of piano tones, smeared, stretched, and warbled by a process that seems more attuned to tape decay techniques t…
Selbstportrait - Vol. II
This is the fourth solo album by German keyboardist Hans-Joachim Roedelius, originally released in 1980 on Sky Records. With Selbstportrait, Roedelius gave unequivocal confirmation that he no longer was treading the hitherto common paths of electronic music. Selbstportrait - Vol. II corroborated the findings: for Roedelius, electronics would no longer be a means of creating abstract, noise-like music in the future, nor of generating utopian, mechanical rhythmic structures. His own utopia was …
Selbstportrait
LP version on 180 gram vinyl. This is the third solo album by German keyboardist Hans-Joachim Roedelius, originally released in 1979 on Sky Records. Alongside his ongoing work with Cluster and Harmonia, Roedelius amassed an almost incalculable number of musical notations during his time in the idyllic Weser Uplands. Fleeting sketches, spontaneous improvisations, implied miniatures, rough compositions -- Roedelius recorded virtually every idea he came up with outside the studio sessions on h…
Air Museum
Air Museum blurs the lines between acoustic and electronic music even more without sacrificing melody or the delicacy of their sound. It is an album of firsts. It was the first album that the acoustic instruments were not processed via a computer. Instead, the processing of the instrumentation (acoustic and electric guitar, cello, accordion, piano, bass etc.) was done using a variety of pedals, modular synths, and other analog techniques. While acoustic instruments were used extensively, …
Lustwandel
180 gram LP version. The third studio album by Hans-Joachim Roedelius, originally released by Sky Records in 1981, fulfilled a dream he had long cherished. A series of chamber music pieces, with grand piano solos taking center stage in some places, archaised percussion patterns in others. Lustwandel represents a logical progression, following on from Jardin Au Fou (re-released on Bureau B in 2009). Both albums were recorded at Paragon Studios in 1979 and produced by Peter Baumann (Tangerine Drea…
The Diary Of The Unforgotten (Selbstportrait VI)
LP version. Pressed on 180 gram vinyl. The Diary Of The Unforgotten is a collection of recordings from the years 1972 to 1978 and was first released in 1990 (with different artwork). Between the years of 1972 and 1978, Hans-Joachium Roedelius and Dieter Moebius, later joined by Michael Rother, lived out on a country estate in the idyllic, diminutive settlement of Forst in the Weser Uplands. It was here that the Harmonia albums, legendary recordings with Brian Eno and various splendid Cluster …
Wenn Der Sujdwind Weht
Wenn Der Südwind Weht ("When The South Wind Is Blowing") is the seventh solo album by Hans-Joachim Roedelius, originally released on Sky Records in 1981 (also known under the title Selbstportrait IV). "Where on earth does Roedelius find such a beautiful array of notes?" wonders Asmus Tietchens in his sleeve notes for this reissue. Not an unreasonable question. Roedelius, a pioneer of ambient music, Krautrock and, arguably, synthesizer pop, member of such seminal bands as Cluster and Harmonia, …
Jardin Au Fou
LP version; includes all the original album tracks. Composer/poet Hans-Joachim Roedelius (Kluster, Cluster, Harmonia) is one of the most prolific musicians of the German avant-garde and a key figure in the birth of Krautrock, synthesizer pop and ambient music. Jardin Au Fou is his second solo album, originally issued in 1979 on France's Egg label, and produced by former Tangerine Dream member Peter Baumann. This record was all the more noteworthy as it bore no resemblance whatsoever to what…
Flammende Herzen
Michael Rother (half of the influential Krautrock group Neu! and a founding member of Kraftwerk and Harmonia) recorded this first solo album with producer Conny Plank in 1976. Rother's signature guitar sound, the mechanical percussion (Jaki Liebezeit of Can) and the simple yet outerworldly anthemic melodies make Flammende Herzen an outstanding and visionary record."Finally reissued on vinyl, this is the 1976 solo debut from from Neu!/Harmonia guitarist Michael Rother. This would be the fir…
Bunny
Simon Scott produced one of the best records of 2009 with Navigare, an album whose shoegaze dronemusic was dotted with radioluminescent dream-pop numbers. It was hardly a surprise to us when we learned that he was the drummer of Slowdive way back when. Since then, Scott has produced a single for Immune and a collaboration with Jasper TX, both equally fantastic. For his second proper record, Scott makes a slight detour; but one that is well suited to everything else that's been released by…
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Boto [Encantado]
Artificial Memory Trace is the long standing musical project of Slavek Kwi, who was born in Czechoslovakia, lived for 14 years in Belgium, and since 2000 has been based in Ireland. Slavek has been making music for more than 20 years under the label Artificial Memory Trace. His works are precise combinations of restructured (mostly) environmental sounds, where the notions of perception, sensation, cognition, and ultimately reality are questioned, notably through the use of musique concrète techni…
Grisp
Running the gamut of improv, concrète, industrial tape music, and cut-up sounds. Featuring appearances by MITCHELL BROWN (GASP), AARON HEMPHILL (LIARS), PETER KOLOVOS (OPEN CITY), RICK POTTS (LAFMS, SOLID EYE, AIRWAY), and source material by SMEGMA and the HATERS. Partially collects material from the Beat (777 Was 666), Grisp, and DDT (Chondritic Sound) cassettes. For those that say things like, "I don't really listen to CDs"—you're totally lame.
The Dossier Years
After leaving Subterranean Records, Z' ev moved on to the fabulous German label Dossier for his next two albums. "Schönste Muziek" and "Bust This!" were released in 1986/1988 and bring you the classical Z'ev percussion sound. Rarely has he been more innovative and more experimental in his work, a great variety of sounds is being created out of all kinds of percussion instruments. On this CD re-issue, both these albums have been carefully remastered. Possibly a perfect starting point if you want …
What Does The Brain Have To Do With It
Z'EV has been exploring and breaking ground in the audio and textual fields since the mid 1970s. Although best-known for his metal-based percussive performances, uns, his electronics and vocal-based whirlwind, was one of the most innovative (and individual) audio experiments of the early 1980s. uns's combination of sound poetics and voice treatments with dense sonic landscapes resulted in challenging, unique, and rewarding audio. A historical testament to the challenge uns presented appea…