Procession Acts
Ross Gentry returns to Bathetic under his Villages moniker to present his sophomore LP, Procession Acts. Procession Acts carries on Villages’ debut LP’s grand expanse of ambient glory, while carrying the sound to a heightened level. Procession Acts comes across as much more cinematic. It is a denser record, more precise in its attack and its immersion. Procession Acts moves along at a steady pace, while streaking the room with beauty. It’s a rhythmic, pulsing, thumping, ticking record, that move…
Shade Themes From Kairos
"Shade Themes from Kairos is a new iteration of the dream for all the guitar freaks out there, bringing together a couple of singular players together, just to see what happens. In this case, the players were old friends and collaborators Oren Ambarchi and Stephen O'Malley, playing in a space engineered and co-populated by Randall Dunn. From the top, Shade Themes from Kairos is resonant as a collective inquest in sound, with all the players deeply immersed within the panorama they are creating. …
Simple Songs
"Yes, Simple Songs is an album of songs sung by Jim O'Rourke all the way through! It has been ten years since Jim's voice rang out from a new album. Ah, when James Michael was just a wee lad, he sang all the time, with a lovely little lilt to his voice, like all the children do. But the songs he sang gave his parents no end of consternation: 'Great Decei-verrr! Cigarettes, ice cream, figurines... of the Vir-gin Mar-eeee!' Aye, if only we'd-a been there -- little Jimmy's career would have started…
Fridge Trax Plus
20th year anniversary reissue of the two milestone releases that kickstarted the entire Mego / Editions Mego imprint and initial aesthetic. This deluxe reissue brings together the first MEGO release, 'Fridge Trax' and the full length album that followed 'Live and final Fridge', originally released on Source in 1995. Made by the founders of the initial Mego label, Peter Rehberg (Pita), alongside Andreas Pieper and Ramon Bauer (General Magic) these recordings are legendary in their execution. It w…
New Wave Copy Center / How is your Popo?
The photocopier is a joy to work with — though not in your tiny apartment, and it can be expensive to maintain. That's precisely why copy centers are a great help! In Antwerp, Belgium, where Speedqueen is based, the cheapest copy centre was more akin to a darkroom than a help desk. Its two employees were depressed, almost identical goth sisters — they both had thick, red and black oil painted hair, white skin and dodgy piercings, tightly wrapped in black clothing. The smile had yet to be invente…
Soul of Trade
Stupid Set are one of the most sought after bands of the Bologna rock scene. Their parabola ended in the early eighties but the band, led by Gaznevada's first bass player Gianpietro Huber, had been one of the most intense of the new era, leading to a connection with the stalwarts of American avant-garde. Truly they've been the Italian answer to Residents and Negativland. Soul of Trade was executed only three times in 1981 and was a strong emotional and technical effort: from the generation…
Je Ne Connais Pas Cet Homme
Following their groundbreaking collaboration with the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Comme à la Radio, Areski and Brigitte Fontaine began recording almost exclusively together as a duo. Originally released in 1973, Je Ne Connais Pas Cet Homme is their first record billed under both names. Deeply rooted in North African and European folk traditions, the album features evocative vignettes with breezy vocals and minimal accompaniment of classical guitar, strings, and woodwinds. As always, there is a m…
Natural Information
Eremite presents the first CD edition of Joshua Abrams's acclaimed 2010 LP Natural Information, now out of print on vinyl. Abrams's first record for Eremite is another fascinating entry in his discography of recordings that gather aesthetic input from all over the map into vivid personal statements. At the heart of Natural Information is the guimbri, a three-stringed animal hide bass traditionally used by the Gnawa people of North Africa in healing ceremonies. Combining solo, trio, and qua…
Represencing
Eremite presents the first CD edition of Joshua Abrams' acclaimed 2012 LP Represencing, now out of print on vinyl. Represencing is the second installment of the Joshua Abrams sound-world, first introduced in 2010 on Natural Information (MTE 061CD). Abrams again organizes small group statements around the resonant grooves of the guimbri, a North African three-stringed, animal hide bass, with a unique and broadly assimilative compositional voice. Blending sources that range from traditional mus…
Atemnot
One of the biggest rarities from the cosmische kraut underground scene has to be Hardy Kukuk’s lost 1981 top Berlin School electronic masterpiece Atemnot. Kukuk’s synth explorations take the adventures of masters of the genre like Tangerine Dream or Klaus Schulze one step further into the early eighties. Kukuk is joined on these recordings by Andreas Schneider on guitar and congas and Klaus Bloch (of A La Ping Pong fame) on guitar and tape effects. After Atemnot Kukuk recorded a second LP, Timel…
In The Poor Sun
Wolfgang Orschakowski is one of the most free spirits of the krautrock underground. Hailing from Hamburg, he has been producing music, paintings and all other kinds of artistic projects for the past four decades, always active with dozens of new projects boiling inside his head. Zippo Zetterlink In The Poor Sun, originally released in 1971 as a self produced private pressing that is nowadays impossible to find unless you are ready to pay some amounts of money in the collector's market, was his f…
Dorembus Jacq Arondel Michalakos
Jay Alansky, a.k.a. Patrick Arondel, was one half of the duet who brought us that amazing Beautiful Losers' Nobody Knows The Heaven album in 1974, among many other works - he has been active in the music world for the last four decades producing various albums through the years under many different aliases. But our matter today is a faithful reissue of his earliest works. Season, done with band mates Christophe Jacq, François Dorembus and Michel Michalakakos was originally issued on Arondel's fa…
The Growth of Artefacts
Presenting a brand new composition from Taiwan based sound artist, YannickDauby, The Growth of Artefacts is a rich atmospheric soundscape based on british anthropologist Tim Engold's 'On Weaving a Basket'.'The world of our experience is, indeed, continually and endlessly coming into being around us as we weave. If it has a surface, it is like the surface of the basket: it has no 'inside' or 'outside'. Mind is not above, nor nature below; rather, if we ask where mind is, it is in the weave of the…
'?' '!'
The first solo electronics and percussion by the radical European improvisor since 1979, '?''!' is the culmination of decades of research into and experience of new modes of communication. The disc, recorded and mixed in Germany by Gerald Schauder, features cover art in collaboration between Lytton and Brazilian artist Federico Peñalve.Lytton, a central figure in the British free improvisation movement of the 1960s and 70s which included Derek Bailey, Evan Parker, and Paul Rutherford, was instru…
Slow Crimes
First vinyl reissue of 1982's Slow Crimes by The Work. Reissued on CD with bonus tracks by Megaphone in 1991, Slow Crimes is a little-known treasure of transformative magnitude. The Work were formed in 1979 by saxophonist Tim Hodgkinson (following the dissolution of Henry Cow), guitarist Bill Gilonis, bassist Mick Hobbs, and drummer Rick Wilson, although Slow Crimes showcases each member on a variety of instruments. Also featured is Catherine Jauniaux on guest vocals throughout the album. The Wo…
The Art Of Mirrors (Homage To Derek Jarman)
Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson was a musical legend, one of the original members of Throbbing Gristle and an innovative musician in his own right. This live recording is an homage to the short film by Derek Jarman: The Art of Mirrors. Recorded before the end of Coil in 2004 and captured here on cd."This ‘Homage to Derek Jarman’ is really a triple homage in itself. Obviously a cementation of the mastery of one of the original Throbbing Gristle noiser, the music by association contains the DNA of J…
Doing The Splash
The Megaphone & Knock 'em Dead labels present the fifth release from improvising trio Konk Pack. Konk Pack are a two-thirds British and one-third Austrian "organic" improvisational group. Their music can be very delicate and light but when they get hot and bothered, it's like being inside of a hurricane, an earthquake and an electrical storm, all at the same time. All three members of Konk Pack have been improvising for decades with musicians like Lol Coxhill,Cecil Taylor, Tom Cora, Alan Silva, …
Black Snakes
‘Black Snakes’ was issued in 1983 as a co-release by Switzerland’s Rec Rec and Germany’s Pure Freunde label. With a quartet featuring synthist Allen Ravenstine doubling on soprano sax, this was a smaller group than had appeared on either of the Crayola’s two previous releases, ‘Soldier-Talk’ and ‘Kangaroo?’. Mayo Thompson’s guitar in particular shines in the space allowed by this configuration.
Never Were The Ways She Was
Two of Constellation's acclaimed solo instrumental artists join forces on this tremendous new album of original compositions for horn and violin. Colin Stetson has developed a unique and renowned voice as a performer and composer, chiefly on bass and tenor saxophones, where he rallies an array of technical strengths and innovations (circular breathing, contact micing of his own body and the body of his instrument, vocalizations through the reed) to make some of the most captivatingly organic, da…
The Pilgrim To The Absolute
“The absolute works together with the relative, like two arrows meeting in mid-air.” So wrote Chinese Zen ancestor Shitou Xiqian, in an eighth century poem known as “The Sandokai” – or “The Identity of Relative and Absolute.” There’s more than a faint echo of Shitou’s ancient words reverberating throughout “The Pilgrim to the Absolute,” an essentially wordless but highly communicative new album from the Peruvian sound collective known as Montibus Communitas. It’s an echo that signals the merging…