Move Ground
This is based on the soundtrack of an audio video installation and basically has been constructed from field recordings of various locations around the city of Cologne. The theme is an exploration of space and acoustics with sounds of background noise mixed with new electronic sounds. It's fairly sparse and minimal and at various points I can hear the sound of my typing drowning out the record. There are certainly some interesting sounds though once things get going, particularly on side …
Phase
With the seemingly limitless mass of drone albums out there, it is tempting, even for a sympathetic listener like myself, to dismiss much of the lot as the sonic equivalent of a warm bath: immersive and pleasant but little more than a balm for overtaxed ears. With Phase, there is no such temptation. This is drone in its more intense, bracing form and it is far from soporific. The album consists of a single 39-minute piece. It is an amalgamation of recordings by Jason Kahn and Jon Mueller that we…
Live at Cosmopolite
Celebrating their fifteenth anniversary, Norwegian fusionists Jaga Jazzist present their first ever live concert DVD, filmed at Cosmopolite in Oslo on the 4th April 2005. This recording was made around the same time as the release of Jaga's What We Must, and features material from throughout their career, all replicated with remarkable levels of precision on the live stage. In addition to the excellent 80-minute concert the DVD comes with bonus features that include …
Reverie
Immune is proud to announce the release of Reverie, a brand new mini-LP release from Seattle based Rafael Anton Irisarri. These are the first new recordings from Irisarri since the Hopes and Past Desires 7” EP released in early 2009. Reverie features two brand new compositions, “Lit A Dawn” and “Embraced” on Side A and an amazing side-long interpretation of the Arvo Pärt classic “Fu?r Alina” on Side B. Irisarri has long been a student and listener of Arvo Pärt’s approach to composition an…
At the cut
Spilling over with trembling strings and thunderous crescendos, "Coward" foreshadows the electric energy that is to be found throughout Vic Chesnutt's newest record. With members of Godspeed You! Black Emperor, A Silver Mt. Zion, and Fugazi once again contributing, At the Cut is populated by giant melodies, quiet meditations, and intense studies on mortality and memory. But, for all its bombast, At the Cut is probably most notable for Chesnutt's unwavering honesty and cathartic powe…
Swim
Swim is the record Caribou mastermind Dan Snaith has wanted to bring to fruition for as long as he has been making music. A mathematics scholar and an ingenious multi-instrumentalist/composer, he surprised critics and fans with 2007’s Andorra, a brilliant, electro-tinged pop breakthrough with a timeless grace that made most year-end “Best of” lists and won Canada’s prestigious Polaris Music Prize. After the startling infectiousness of Andorra, Swim is a more complex, multi-layered affair…
Trace
Cassette-only release. Edition of 250 copies. John Butcher's work ranges through improvisation, his own compositions, multi-tracked saxophone pieces and explorations with feedback and extreme acoustics. Originally a physicist, he left academia in 1982, and has since collaborated with hundreds of musicians. He is well known as a soloist, recently exploring unusual site-specific acoustics, and has released seven albums of solo saxophone music. His tape for The Tapeworm features two contrasting per…
Hysterie off music
In the beginning, Hystérie off Music was conceived as a catalogue-record, playing with musical genres. It evolved quickly to unveil new landscapes of Ghédalia Tazartès’ universe. Tender, funny, but also scary, infernal, this new album is, according to its author, his most accomplished to date, a true movie for the ear.
as/if/when
Sub Rosa presents works by industrial music pioneer, Z'EV. The physical vibrations of the objects in his works with both text and sound has been influenced by the Middle Eastern mystical system best known as Kabbalah, as well as -- but not limited to -- African, Afro-Caribbean and Indonesian rhythms, musics and cultures. He has studied Ewe music, Balinese gamelan, and Indian tala. From 1959-1965 he studied drumming with Arnie Frank, then Chuck Flores and then Art Anton at Drum City in Van …
Bag It
double Vinyl edition with additional tracks: The Thing with Mats Gustafsson, Ingebrigt Haaker-Flaten and Paal Nilssen-Love covering 54 Nude Honeys, The Ex, Duke Ellington and Albert Ayler, intense modern improv. Swedish reed-chewer Mats Gustafsson is probably bored to tears by now by the Brötzmann comparisons that so regularly greet his work with the Thing. Even so, the elder German icon remains a central pillar of reference, most noticeably through a gnarled horn language that balances mach…
Fugue
I began writing about this Tape & Bill Wells 'Fugue' record yesterday but I gave up as the words just were not coming to me. I guess that's probably a good sign though as I was just kind of getting into the melancholy zone of the record, which certainly is a thing of beauty. Wells' guitar playing is delicate and magical. The Tape guys really give him space to do his thing adding wonderful little details and twinkles into the mix. This quite simply is the prettiest, most charming record I …
Eternal
"Eternal finds Sean Smith in peak compositional form, coaxing sensory-enhancing textures from an ensemble of players. His erstwhile acoustic guitar providing the anchor, Smith provides common links with Eastern and Middle Eastern folk music, folk-rock, Appalachian stomp, and Robbie Basho-esque American Raga that bobs and weaves but never ribbons itself away from its common tether. Especially reminiscent of the tilaka-adorned works of Sandy Bull and Peter Walker, with nods towards the Eastern inf…
Resume the Cosmos
"Resume the Cosmos" finds the unclassifiable Virginian band Rake performing some of their most diverting and accessible work to date. The five nameless tracks that make up the disc were culled from many hours of studio improvisation, not only on a range of atmospheric instrumentation, but also with studio space and "silence" itself. The elusive membership of Rake play out like reconstructed indie rock fans with fistfuls of Sun Ra/Coltrane/70s Miles/Art Ensemble of Chicago/Henry Cow scattered thr…
Boolean Blues
ASESOME NEW RELEASE! Josh Hanson is another of Portland, Oregon’s underappreciated sons. Having come up through the ranks of long-time, long-forgotten faves Hochenkeit, he also spent time as a member of The Davis Redford Trio. But Hanson’s path diverges into a totally different sphere nowadays, spinning solo modular synth exploits to the stars. Influenced not just by the likes of Subotnick and Cluster but also various types of Eastern sounds, Hanson is looking forward, trying to find new pa…
Papercuts Theater
"Operating from his base in Cincinnati, violinist and noisy dronester C. Spencer Yeh has released music under the name Burning Star Core for over 15 years. He’s worked with a long list of collaborators and toured extensively, the fruits of which resulted in Papercuts Theater. Broken into four equal parts (constituting four sides of the double-LP edition), the material collaged from shows recorded over the past seven years. If the release info is to be believed, Yeh used recordings from 66 differ…
Heard laboratories
"Heard Laboratories is a sonic ethnography of scientific research environments at Harvard University, made using Schoeps cardioid mics in ORTF stereo configuration and a Sound Devices audio recorder. The sounds of equipment, devices, and activities draw attention to the physical processes underlying scientific research, the work underway which provides a ground for our highly technologized society. In the name of human progress, enormous resources are devoted to and consumed by such…
Rostbeständige Zeit
Axel Dörner, Nobuyoshi Ino, Kazuo Imai, Noritaka Tanaka. This is the masterpiece of 2CDs, splitting the music into improvisation (momentary composition) and / or composition. Disc 1 is the improvised music by Axel, Ino, Imai. Guitar sound of Imai is hot and tingling, Ino plays careful his choice pizzicato and arcoexquisitely, and Axel's original sound bring Ôout' into their music. Their atmosphere of music is special one, cannot be similar from every music. Disc 2 consists of all Axel's composi…
The Complete Magick Lantern Cycle
Cinematic magician, legendary provocateur, author of the infamous Hollywood Babylon books and creator of some of the most striking and beautiful works in the history of film, Kenneth Anger is a singular figure in post-war American culture. A major influence on everything from the films of Martin Scorsese, Rainer Werner Fassbinder and David Lynch to the pop art of Andy Warhol to MTV, Anger's work serves as a talisman of universal symbols and personal obsessions, combining myth, artifice an…
10 ans d’essais radiophoniques
Released in 1994. “Anthology of radioplays excerpts produced & recorded 1942-52 at Studio d'essai de la Radio Télévision Française (RTF), for the French national broadcasting company, formerly RTF, later known as ORTF. CD1: “La mise en onde & Le texte et le micro”. CD2: “Le texte et le micro (suite) & L'écran sonore”. CD3: “L'écran sonore (suite) & La radio et ses personnages”. CD4: “La radio et ses personnages (suite) & Machines à mémoire”. 4 CD Box Set with 108 pages paperback book with texts …