Unidentified Sound Object
“Unidentified Sound Project” opens with a section entitled “Quantum Dripping” (three tracks), which relays their non-compromising sound research that deals with stylized interferences. Nervous sound structures (which are then modulated in the subsequent “Rebirth” section), elementary sound particles, cacophonies and granular sound frizzles consistently abuse the electronic medium. Perhaps this is a foil to certain less radical audio expressions, considering that Milani used to make a living as s…
InharmoniCity
The Italian label Synesthesia Recordings is ‘to be intended as a repository of live improvised electroacoustic works. The main goal is to retrieve the late Renaissance praxis of ‘Ricercare’ intended as exploration of a technical device playing it, subverting it in different ways’. Translated to the world of audio, this is done by the U.S.O Project, a duo of Matteo Milani (from Milan actually) and Federico Placidi, both of whom I never heard. Both have a background with digital sound synthesis an…
Imperial Distortion
BACK IN STOCK. Very occasionally a record comes along that we just don't want to review, a record so wondrous that words just seem to fall short. Since we have an urge to persuade anyone who crosses our path to hear 'Imperial Distortion', though, perhaps it's worth a shot nonetheless. Dominick Fernow's Hospital imprint has long impressed us with its output, but never before have we heard anything quite like 'Imperial Distortion' slip out of its ornate iron gates. Those of you in the know will al…
Raga electric
LP version. In the early '60s, fresh from his clean behind the ears years at Harvard, Henry was undergoing rapid ideological shifts: cavorting with Maciunas and the whole Fluxus bit, doing performances at Yoko Ono's loft and recording with La Monte Young; having it out with his Stalinist cohorts over the relative merits of a good blues run and searching for a new musical language outside of the various generic artistic restrictions before him at the time. What he arrived at was an expressive pra…
Earth Horns With Electronic Drone
Yoshi Wada and EM Records presents the first-ever, world-premiere release of Earth Horns With Electronic Drone, recorded live in 1974. Combining four of Wada's self-made "pipehorns" (made from plumbing materials, over three meters in length), with an electronic drone tuned to the electrical current of the performance space, this is a lost masterpiece of early minimalism, placing Wada rightfully in the pantheon with La Monte Young, Phill Niblock, Maryanne Amacher and Alvin Lucier. Recorded…
Virtuoso Saw
the pure union musician, was the sawtooth performer with the occupation musician who serves the oboe player of the los angeles symphony. it attends the musician of the band companion in the back, announcing the extremity of sawtooth performance with the transcendent tech which is lined to the beauty consciousness and professional ability of western classical music. the elegant solo album 1985 indicates one direction of sawtooth music. the japanese first appearance. the booklet attachment of valu…
Symphony Of The Birds
An early electronic manipulation/ musique concrete masterpiece, the reissue of an old 1960 Columbia album, Symphony of the Birds. Working with CBS radio technician Mortimer Goldberg, Fassett painstakingly pieced together fragments from recordings of bird calls originally made in the field by Jerry and Norma Stilwell. On this recording you will hear an orchestra of singing birds." That's how Jim Fassett introduces this extraordinary disc. The one-time musical director of CBS Radio composed his bi…
Lost / Found
This double CD with 44 (!) tracks is a welcome re-release of this essential compilation which was initially released on Tarantulla Productions. A must-have for wave / minimal / electro fans! New artwork.
Premio Malattia
Dario Sanfilippo, computer, FeNeBaNo-LiDiSProS Project (Feedback Network Based Non-Linear Digital Signal Processing System). Recorded, mixed and mastered in 2008. Dario sanfilippo was born in Agrigento, Italy in 1983. He started working on electro-acoustic music in about 1997. Since then, his research concentrated on experimental and non-conventional music, both composed and improvised. His current main projects are based on computer for the creation of non-linear DSP systems through feedback-ne…
Merzbow Plays Smegma Plays Merzbow
Chances are that most of Smegma's fans are already familiar with Merzbow's music. This collaboration, occasionally referred to as Smegma Plays Merzbow Plays Smegma or even Plays, features two 20-minute tracks. In "Electro Smegmacoustic Music," Masami Akita plays Smegma tapes, an audio generator, a teleband tranceiver, and a mixer. In "Smegma Plays Merzbow," Smegma use Merzbow tapes, tape loops, record players, and a few acoustic instruments. The result is surprisingly homogeneous -- enough to ma…
Con '72
this is an archived recording that sat in the vaults for 30 years before it was issued by the great qbico. this recording is a tough one to sit through, sort of like any early synth recordings, a veritable wankfest of synthesized bleeps and blurps. but don't let that fool you, this is way better than many other synthesizer albums of the period, having more of a range of sounds and feelings than most bands that did this sound, and for 1972 it's pretty impressive. still, sitting through 40+ minute…
Fifty-Six
Dark red vinyl. After releasing two unique LPs back in the '60s for the legendary ESP label with his Ritual All 770 and another one for Riverboat, finally Alan Sondheim is back! This is his 1st LP after nearly 35 years and here he plays guitar, alpine zither, electronics, field recordings... as usual he presents us an eclectic mix of fascinating sounds.
Trulofa
New European folk/trance orkustra from Denmark with their debut release on Qbico. Various acoustic instruments cohere in hymns to the roar of the cosmos that are as dippily fried as the first Siloah LP and as aggressively invasive as Pelt at their most planet-levitating. Their name comes from Shirley Collins's tracing of the idea of the true love knot to the Danish word Trulofa.
Fiteiras Suadas
Clear azul vinyl, artwork by Joana Da Conceicao. For sure one of the weirdest and most unique records on Qbico, thanks to this young couple from Porto; hard to explain, no easy listening... but once you get attuned, it grows on you... deeply. Some vague similarities with the Astral Social Club LP.
No Face In The Bog
Cow's milk vinyl, artworks and music by Chris Pottinger, with insert. Side A originally released as a limited edition CD-R art set in 100 copies on Tasty Soil, Creature. B1 track is unreleased, recorded in 2007. B2 originally released in 2006 on Fag Tapes as a side of a tour cassette with Sick Llama. B3 was played as a loop for 8 months straight on a pirate radio station that broadcast out of the Cloud House on 107.9 FM. Far-out electronic music for the third millennium! The track on side A is s…
quattro pianoforti
Amazing catalogue (english/italian) focused on a 1999 Exhbition/Performance by Michael Harrison, Charlemagne Palestine, Philip Glass e Terry Riley, with amazing early pictures. A must have it for those into early minimalism, 60 pages, fully illustrated. Very few copies available, long out of print
It ain't necessarily so
Ignaz Schick (tube sine wave, bows, objects, turntable), Joerg Maria Zeger (stomp boxes, guitars), Burkhard Beins (drums, percussion, objects, zither) and Charlemagne Palestine (fazoli grand piano, vocals, cognac glass). 'In early December 2006 a live performance of perlonex & Charlemagne Palestine took place at the Viennese jazz club Porgy & Bess, recorded and broadcasted by the Austrian radio ORF in 2006 & remastered at Amann Studios Vienna in 2008. Inspired by the club's name and the chance m…
Wax Canopy
RECENT. Over the past few years Alex Cobb has developed a signature sound that blurs the line between blissed-out guitar work & atonal, blown-out dirges. His soothing, six-string sorcery still dots the horizon on this album, but there's also a more angular, blown-out monster at work here. It's like he's channeling the angry spirits of the world into fuzzed elegiac strains. Limited to 500 copies.
Ore
Fluid forms of drones, doomy laments, & folk melodies fleshed out from a backbone of sine oscillators & violin. Behind these droning squalls is the lone figure of Marielle Jakobsons. Armed w/ her tiny army of sonic weapons, she concocts a lavaflow of melodies only to then bury them underneath a flowing river of muck. Limited to 500.
The Blue Notebooks
Richter is a British-based, German-born pianist & composer. Following 2002's highly acclaimed "Memoryhouse"- performed by the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra & released on the BBC's classical label, Late Junction - The Blue Notebooks is his 2nd solo album, a distinctive & adventurous work that is beautifully recorded & cinematic in scope.14