Earlier Music
Officer! was founded by Londoner Mick Hobbs. His roots were in the RIO scene of the late 70s and early 80s. Initially he worked as guitarist in The Work, subsequently he became closely associated with This Heat and their Cold Storage Studio in Brixton, working with artists like Family Fodder, Catherine Jauniaux or Zeena Parkins. The band's first album 8 New Songs By Mick Hobbs came out in 1982 on cassette only. It forms the first half of this CD re-issue. With the exception of two songs that cam…
Bichon Frisé
The cassette release Bichon Frisé features 4 tracks of atmospheric and eerie New Age music, made by Børre Mølstad, Danielle Dahl, Niklas Adam and Anders Vestergaard at the beautiful peninsula "Nesodden" outside of Oslo back in 2013. The sound is both soothing and easy listening but with an underlying feeling of hallucinatory horror; perhaps not unlike the popular dog breed after whom it is named.
Kosua
Incredible homemade ethnodelic fantasies from London based artist Black Merlin (George Thompson) started a deep love affair with the remote island of Papua New Guinea. After his first album ‘Hipnotik Tradisi’, released on Island Of The Gods; George was intrigued to find a place drenched in culture and untouched by the western world.In 2016 George planned his first solo expedition, venturing out to meet the Kosua Tribe. Over the course of the next two years George would record the sounds of the K…
Rock Y Roll
** Edition of 300 ** War Extension announces the vinyl re-issue of Rok Y Roll by Vic Serf & The Villains, originally released by It's War Boys on cassette in 1982. Musicians on the album comprised Vic Serf (alias of Jim "Amos" Welton), Cathy Spermwrecker, Rita Chulo, and Larry O'Houlihan, along with guest appearances from Ron Dealo, Lepke B., and Sara Fancy. The recording is situated in a particularly fervent and inventive period of 1980s independent and experimental music-making, in which musi…
Bluejeans & Moonbeams
"About the best one can say about 1974's Bluejeans & Moonbeams is that it's not as bad as his other release of the year, Unconditionally Guaranteed. In fact, there are two tracks, the pretty reverie Observatory Crest and the stomping blues-rocker Party of Special Things to Do, that are actually quite good. The rest of the album, however, is fairly dire. Recorded with anonymous studio musicians who are clearly out of their league and glossed to a soul-less polish by producer Andy DiMartino, Bluej…
Stoner Witch
The true gods of the stoner underground music, the Melvins, released their album Stoner Witch in 1994. The album is one of their most successful releases and one where their musical capacities can be felt in the depth, powerful and experimental sounds. It melds the sound of their earlier records with some ambient and hardcore melodies. The monster anthem “Revolve” is a true masterpiece that breathes the southern rock and brings a handful of well-crafted riffs. Another epic track and one of the b…
Uivo Zebra
When improvisers turn to electricity and imposing volume levels, the results are sometimes as intense as they are tedious, because they forget that it can quickly become a stodgy, lumbering mess that bleeds out way too soon. Not so here, as the musicians of Uivo Zebra have the experience, but also (and more importantly) the awareness that the most enduring results are found when guts, self-knowledge, shared vision and discipline are kept in rigorous balance. Which needn’t imply it becomes safe o…
Zwölf
12 short live solo guitar, like a portrait of the Austrian musician at a time of his course, oscillating between minimalism, American primitive, improvisation or noise. Guitar’s lover will be pleased.Some tracks with field recordings from Steve Bates.Mastered by Martin Siewert.
String Quartets
String Quartet 1, 2 et 3 composed by Reinhold Friedl (Zeitkratzer) and performed by Quatuor Diotima.Reinhold Friedl’s string quartets do not pretend to be string quartets, they are anti-Goethe. There is no sophisticated conversation of four elder gentlemen, sitting in armchairs. The music is physical work for the performers and intended to be physical pleasure for the listeners. All three quartets are based on the same idea: smooth transformations from a given texture into another one. The rando…
Momentary Encounters
Finally the second batch of CDs in the highly-acclaimed Canadian Composers Series is here.Momentary encounters(5) (2015) by Heather Roche (clarinet). Any three players (2016) by John Lely (melodica), Simon Limbrick (vibraphone), Anton Lukoszevieze (cello). A grey, bent interior horizon (2016) by Cristian Alvear (guitar), Distributed tourism (2014/17) by Mira Benjamin (violin), Simon Limbrick (vibraphone), Heather Roche (clarinet), Nancy Ruffer (flute), Anton Lukoszevieze (cello).Four fine, delic…
O Zomer!
Finally the second batch of CDs in the highly-acclaimed Canadian Composers Series is here.O Zomer! (2007) by Apartment House, Philip the Wanderer (2012) by Philip Thomas (piano) & Clemens Merkel (whistling). For Mira (2012) by Mira Benjamin (violin). Duet for Cello and Orchestra (2015) by Charles Curtis (cello), BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, conducor Ilan Volkov.Two ensemble works and two solo pieces by Christian Wolff’s favourite contemporary composer, who is blazing a very personal trail th…
Just So
Finally the second batch of CDs in the highly-acclaimed Canadian Composers Series is here.Just So (2008/18). 5 Warblework (2011). About Bach (2015). Leaving (2011) by Quatuor Bozzini with Clemens Merkel & Alissa Cheung (violins), Stephanie Bozzini (viola), Isabelle Bozzini (cello).Another disc of extraordinary music by Cassandra Miller, this one containing four string quartets superbly played by Quatuor Bozzini.
Voice and Sky
"Voice and Sky provides both a look at a previous work, On the Breeze – a series of public space interventions and text / sound installation – and an extension of that work in the form of a book and CD publication. My view is that an installation or any kind of work dealing with the idea of space – be it a public space or a designated art space – can only be fully experienced by being in that space first hand. In the case of On the Breeze, using material gathered hiking extensively through the S…
Moss Trumpet
Edition of 250. Having released four full-length albums framed around more song-oriented spheres, Melbourne artist Francis Plagne has concurrently moved around collaborative endeavors with Andrew Chalk, Joe Talia, and Crys Cole. He was also a part of that Food Court record released on Graham Lambkin's Kye label in 2014. Which brings us to Moss Trumpet, Plagne's first solo album which exclusively orbits a more abstract domain. Taking inspiration from Costin Miereanu's Luna Cinese (1975), this gen…
Disfigured With Abbreviations
Edition of 250. Debut recording from two troubadours of oppositional creep, MP Hopkins and Mark Harwood. Inspired by Philip K. Dick and the useless machines that haunt us all, Disfigured With Abbreviations is a roundtable exquisite corpse which crawls through a miraculous environment, at once sensual and sinister. How is it that the perpetual promise of a future lands us in a deeper quagmire? How do two gentlemen with scruffy vocabularies fall into a sonic landscape of such haunted beauty? Follo…
Home Boy, Sister Out
Don Cherry's downtown Paris funk masterwork Home Boy, Sister Out, produced in 1985 by Ramuntcho Matta and originally released by Barclay in France only, finally gets a worldwide release on Wewantsounds. Featuring French post-punk muse Elli Medeiros, avant-garde poet Brion Gysin, and cult Senegalese drummer Abdoulaye Prosper Niang (Xalam), this is a unique soundbite of Paris in the early '80s at its coolest when funk, jazz, and new wave were mingling with sounds from Africa, Jamaica, and Latin Am…
Windows
Wewantsounds present the first ever reissue Jack Wilkins's highly sought-after Mainstream Records album Windows, originally released in 1973. Produced by Bob Shad, the album, which is on many want-lists, is especially cult for his rendition of Freddie Hubbard's classic Red Clay, notably sampled by A Tribe Called Quest (on Sucka Nigga) and Chance The Rapper. Recorded in 1973 at New York's Record Plant, this superb session sees guitarist Jack Wilkins in a trio setting accompanied by Mike Moore on …
Joutsenen Juju
Gatefold jacket, black vinyl limited to 300 copies. Svart Records are proud to present the first ever reissue of Ilpo Saastamoinen’s groundbreaking album Joutsenen juju. Originally released on Love Records in 1976, this double vinyl release features a full album of unreleased bonus material from Saastamoinen’s personal archives. An active musician since his teens in the 1960’s, Saastamoinen played in Soulset with Harri Saksala and Paroni Paakkunainen. He then befriended the legendary drummer Ed…
Strings
Strings is one of the best known and best loved Finnish jazz albums from the 70s, but annoyingly difficult to find on vinyl. The Svart reissue presents the album mastered for vinyl from the original tapes and comes with new liner notes. From 1970 until 1974 Otto Donner, one of the founders of Love Records, worked as the director of the entertainment section of the Finnish Broadcasting Company. The idea for Strings came up during that time when Juhani Aaltonen and Donner ran into each other at Yl…
Kondole / Dead Cat
Cold Spring Records present Kondole / Dead Cat, a double CD and DVD collection. The rare film features: Derek Jarman, Andrew Tiernan -- The Pianist (2002), 300 (2006), The Bunker (2001), Derek Jarman's Edward II (1991) -- and Genesis P-Orridge (Psychic TV, Throbbing Gristle). The first CD features the complete, long version of "Dead Cat". "...what
could be more beautiful that such a sustaining & chronic radical as
Gen could have provided us all -- in the form of Kondole -- with a piece of trul…