Teenage Jesus And The Jerks
During the late 1970s, after No Wave pioneer Lydia Lunch met saxophonist James Chance, she began setting her angry and disjointed poetry to anti-music, founding her ground-breaking band Teenage Jesus and The Jerks with Lunch’s shouted lyrics matched by her non-conventional use of electric guitar. The group’s self-titled debut EP is a fast and furious affair, produced by Robert Quine of the Voidoids/Lou Reed, with future Nick Cave drummer Jim Sclavunos on bass and Bradley Field on minimalist perc…
Queen Of Siam
After the demise of Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, Lydia Lunch launched her solo career with Queen Of Siam, arguably her greatest LP. In true No Wave style, the album is a mishmash of irritants, but her palette is far broader here, lurching from slow dirges, excessive feminist exhortations, and raucous personal purges to a touch of disco and lounge music exoticism, as conjured by Voidoids/Lou Reed guitarist Robert Quine, Contortions bassist Jack Ruby, and John Cale’s drummer, Douglas Browne. Spiri…
Übers Jahr
The German band Schatterau returns to Hands in the Dark with their latest release, Übers Jahr ('Throughout the Year'), which follows their acclaimed debut album from 2024. This sophomore effort, as its title implies, delves into the cyclical nature of time and the duality of the transient and the eternal unfolding of events. The album comprises 17 vignettes that reflect on the seasons, capturing their unique light and sounds, the passage of time, and the interplay of movement and stillness, as w…
Otoconia
*100 copies limited edition*
Composed & Recorded by Mark VernonMastered by Yiannis TsirikoglouDesign & Artwork by Yorgos Vourlidas
Blind Alley
*60 copies limited edition*
Recorded 25-26 May 2024 in Milan, Italy
GD: 4 track RecorderMC: 4 track Recorder
Even The Horizon Knows Its Bounds
From Lawrence English: "I like to think that sound haunts architecture. It's one of the truly magical interactions afforded by sound's immateriality. It's also something that has captivated us from the earliest times. It's not difficult to imagine the exhilaration of our early ancestors calling to one another in the dark cathedral like caves which held wonder, and security, for them. Today the ways in which sound occupies space, the so-called liquid architecture, holds just as much wonder, albei…
Journey to the Cave of Guanyin
The inspiration for these pieces comes from the Chinese folklore of Guanyin, a deity whose name translates to ‘the one who perceives all the sounds, or cries, of the world’. Also known as Guanshiyin 觀世音, she is the embodiment of infinite compassion. I grew up knowing of Guanyin as a female deity, but recently discovered that she had transformed through the centuries from the male Hindu bodhisattva, Avalokiteśvara. I instantly found an affinity for this gender-fluid figure, who was said to have a…
I Know the Number of the Sand and the Measure of the Sea
I Know the Number of the Sand and the Measure of the Sea is the first collaboration of Lea Bertucci and Olivia Block. This collaboration was set into slow motion some years ago, in 2017, when Lea and Olivia connected through an interview facilitated by writer Steve Smith. In 2022, the artists finally had a chance to collaborate, performing an improvised set at Pioneer Works in New York City. Since then, the New York based Bertucci and Chicago based Block remotely built out ideas stemming from th…
Look Under This
*100 copies limited edition* Bernd Boehm’s life and work still remains a mystery to most. Having engaged in several disciplines like painting, film and sculpture, towards the end of 1980’s Bernd produced a series of experimental film soundtracks along with a modest amount of new wave tracks which we now present under this edition. Having initially self-released some of these soundtracks, to be latter on published by Matthias Lang on Irre Tapes, “Look under this” reunites now all of his film soun…
High Tide
*2025 repress* Able Noise are a cross-continent duo based between The Hague (NL) and Athens (GR), built around the experimental baritone guitar and drum playing of George Knegtel and Alex Andropoulos. After a few formative attempts at collaboration, they officially came together as the Able Noise we see now in 2017, uniting over shared thoughts on art and performance encountered while studying at The Royal Academy of Arts in The Hague. Their first recorded work, a seamless 30 minutes of glisteni…
Crucible
Crucible by Loren Mazzacane Connors & Suzanne Langille is a profound exploration of the raw emotional landscapes that can be sculpted through minimalistic yet deeply evocative sounds. The album resides at the intersection of experimental blues and avant-garde, creating a sound that is both hauntingly intimate and expansively atmospheric.
Each track seems to dwell in a space where the boundaries of music blur into a meditative state, driven by Loren's sparse guitar work and Suzanne's ethereal voc…
Chromatic
*Limited Edition of 100 copies!* Commissioned by 180 Studios as part of the UVA exhibition Synchronicity, Chromatic is a software-driven optical instrument that explores the harmony of form and the interaction of colour and sound. Each line, shape, and colour plays a role in constructing this generative audio-visual installation. A computationally programmed, rule-based system endlessly assembles and re-assembles abstract formations and harmonic sequences, producing geometric compositions that p…
Echolocation
'Echolocation' is the astonishing debut album from Mendoza Hoff Revels, a formidable new unit led by Ava Mendoza & Devin Hoff and featuring James Brandon Lewis & Ches Smith. While Mendoza and Hoff have floated around each other's musical orbits for decades, and have been friends for some time, this is their first work together on record. It is an electric & holy harmonic fusion of highly estimable musical forces; wholly rendered. The original impetus of this group was Mendoza’s, based on the lov…
Fortune's Mirror
Solo instrumentalists navigate a free and rambling road through an imaginative, oneiric wilderness. So much expressed without singing/words, a direct power line to the psyche, open for interpretation and brimming with melancholy, joy, and somber reflection. The annals of solo guitar music, much like solo piano, can tap into these almost subliminal lines of communication. The new album/debut LP from Los Angeles by way of Ohio guitarist/flautist/songwriter Barry Archie Johnson sings out as a start…
The Good Son Vs. The Only Daughter
David Sylvian’s ‘The Good Son vs The Only Daughter - The Blemish Remixes’ will be released on vinyl for the first time in January 2025. Initially released on Sylvian’s samadhisound label in 2005, it was only available on CD and digitally. 'The Good Son Vs The Only Daughter' is the nine-track companion to David's 2003 solo album, Blemish. The record features remixes by Burnt Friedman, Sweet Billy Pilgrim, Ryoji Ikeda, Readymade FC, Yoshihiro Hanno, Tatsuhiko Asano, Akira Rabelais, Jan Bang, and E…
Rockgarage zero/quattro (7")
1984 7"EP compilation with four post-punk / experimental / art-wave bands - Diaframma, Qfwfq, Degada Saf, Funkwagen.
Hold That Tiger
CD Edition. Sonic Youth on Superior Viaduct!!! In October 1987, four months after the release of their critically acclaimed Sister LP, Sonic Youth showcased their latest work in a blistering set at Cabaret Metro, Chicago. The concert was introduced by Big Black's Steve Albini (who at the time was banned from the venue) and subsequently released as a semi-official bootleg under the title Hold That Tiger on writer/provocateur Byron Coley's impishly Geffen-baiting label Goofin' (years later the ban…
Camoufleur
2025 repress, LP version. "Sometimes it's like an overstuffed musical armchair -- quite comfy, even when lumpy. The contribution of Markus Popp, whose style of digital scratching has made Oval an experimental household name, adds to the density and often provides an echo of Gastr past while the rest of Camoufleur paints the future." Jim O'Rourke's last album with Gastr del Sol is a subdued, meditative affair, bringing together elements of folk, jazz, film music, and the avant-garde. "The Seasons…
The Peel Sessions
Unearthed from the neolithic tar that eventually swathes all history, Aerial M’s early-98 Peel Session is once again among us
Tournures Cessent / Tournures Cessent Orchestrales
This composition is a kind of false diary of the year 2015, or rather a real concentration of that year’s memories with very little rationality in its hierarchies, its ordering, or in the connections it makes. The narrative, if one wants to hear any, comes from the meeting between chronologies, the shape of the snippets, the fortuitous accidents and such, yet all in the absence of any sequential logic. The idea of building a form of sound by gambling with memories had been turning and returning …