beet5 / Nervures
Limited edition of 200 copies. beet5 takes Beethoven’s Fifth Piano Concerto as its starting point. The slow movement was recorded using a special turntable for the blind that plays back records at quarter speed. I had an old recording of the piece lying around; I forget who the pianist was. The slowed down version was very striking, recognisable as Beethoven’s music but much sadder, more fragile. I developed a piece around this, using my usual array of synthesized sounds, field recordings, ‘borr…
We Sing For The Future & Thamann Variations
Recorded in 2002 by American contemporary composer and pianist, Frederic Rzewski, We Sing For The Future & Thälmann Variations are two compositions from English composer Cornelius Cardew’s Marxist-influenced 'People’s Liberation Music' period. Rzewski came to prominence in the mid-sixties in Rome as a founding member of the MEV (Musica Elettronica Viva) improvisation group (along with Alvin Curran and Richard Teitelbaum), which shared a vision with groups like Cornelius Ca…
Alive
'Alive' is the first vinyl outing from Keith Wood's Hush Arbors since his split 7" with Jerusalem and the Starbaskets on The Great Pop Supplement back in 2008. Hush Arbors is the project of Mr Keith Wood, a good friend of Blackest Rainbow, who has also played in Wooden Wand, Six Organs of Admittance, Zodiacs, Sunburned Hand of the Man, and with Thurston Moore. Hush Arbors ever evolving sound pretty much encapsulates everything he does with these other fine projects, but Keith has definitely got …
Live '418
Ainotamenishis is a loud, heavy guitar group from Tokyo who were birthed from one oviduct marked "Velvet Underground" and a massive salpinx marked "Gaseneta." Their high-energy rock 'n' roll action was first captured on an extremely limited CDR release, now released for the first time on vinyl. Ainotamenishis's brand of controlled panic is sure to spike the tongues of all those who purport to talk about the rock. It is primal, punk, eerie, harsh, and utterly essential.
Ancestral Songs
Daniel Higgs has an unparalleled presence in both body and voice. This, combined with hypnotic repetition, gives the material on Ancestral Songs both a loose discipline and an immense yet serpentine power. Ancestral Songs is comprised of apocalyptic tunes, a banjo raag, mellifluous birdsong, and the sci-fi-sounding duet of a searing Jew's harp and toy piano. "Are You of the Body?" brings out the electric tamboura tone and an accompanying acoustic guitar to melt the spine. A distorted motorik gui…
Metempsychotic Melodies
Daniel Higgs returns with his second full length recording for Holy Mountain after last year's critically acclaimed Ancestral Songs and his contribution. "Atomic Yggdrasil Tarot," to Thrill Jockey's series of books collecting art and music. Metempsychotic Melodies continues to document Higgs' rise as a solo performer. Raw picked banjo drones dominate Metempsychic Melodies as the instrumental "Universal Salutation" fades into the waking dream soliloquy of observation "Love Abides." "Leontocephali…
Megafauna
Understand this: Yoga dispenses a sinister frailty of howling swellsin hissing static that combusts into crawling shock heaps, to the effectof Mayhem performing Twin Peaks incidentals in a prairie recordedby The KLF. A brief description casts them as black metal's answer to Throbbing Gristle. The texture-based rendering of their compositionssails them on a strange sea between song and sound effect as itbobs along the waves like a dead man s bottled message. Aspects ofGoblin rehearsals in dead hi…
Old Punks
Doronco is a bass player who is most well known for his stints in Les Rallizes Dénudés, Suishou no Fune and with Keiji Haino. Here he is joined by members of Maher Shalal Hash Baz, a Frenchman and an additional female vocalist who have made an album of sophisticated 70s style downer pop. The band uses vocals, bassoon and trumpet over a see-sawing battle of piano / guitar shrill balanced against warm rhythms that sound suspiciously close to how you want them to. Translated as "Mud Cloud," t…
Reality Has Got To Die
Since 2003, La Otracina has been hell-bent on creating highly visionary music that melds sonic ideas from the outer reaches of heavy and weird. The Brooklyn group has released three full-length albums and twelve mini-albums, along with a slew of splits and compilation trackss on labels including Holy Mountain and band founder Adam Kriney's own Colour Sounds Recordings. They have completed eight US tours and one Italian tour, in addition to countless shows in their hometown. Their tireless work e…
Silver Bells
New holiday themed single from Moon Duo. Erik and Sanae add more lilt to the season than any combination of egg nog and booze ever will. On the B side the duo wrap a coat around the classic "Goat Head Soup" deep cut "Winter."
Lords of Falconry
A heady, sludge-rocking slab of prime Holy Mountain psychedelia from the fabulously monikered Lords Of Falconry, whose bird of prey-related band name may or may not be some kind of nod to Hawkwind - to whom these guys clearly owe a debt. With tracks like 'Doomsday Legislation' and the Acid Mothers Temple-esque 'Scottish Chords' you can expect thick, fudgey, mind-altering slabs of stoner riffage and fuzzy space-rock of the finest vintage, while some suitably wild soloing slices through the hammer…
Massacre
In "massacre" Wolfgang Mitterer presents us with a passionate analysis of a timeless threesome: power, religion and violence. An opera for five singers, nine musical instruments and electronics.Based on Christopher Marlowe’s drama »The massacre at Paris«, Wolfgang Mitterer paints an acoustic picture of destruction, conspiracy and the thrill of power. His protagonists virtually rid themselves of their identities, turning into typological representations of different points of view. The concrete e…
Whale Heart, Whale Heart
**300 copies** A split album: Sparkle in Grey songs come from a long process of mixing and recordings from various sources, defined by Frans de Waard (Vital Weekly) as "a fine combination between that sorrowful tune played on the violin, the scraping and tinkling of sweet guitar sounds, the gentle crash on cymbal, along with time stretched field recordings."Tex La Homa songs were written and recorded around the birth of Robin Neve Shaw, the inspiration and collaborator on these pieces of music. …
Grape Skin
The trio of Michel Doneda, Christoph Schiller and Jonas Kocher performing music of delicate tension and great assurance recorded in the spectacular church at Ligerz, Switzerland. "Music of delicate tension and great assurance, recorded in 2010 in the spectacular church at Ligerz, overlooking Lake Biel in Switzerland. "The generous acoustic of the church influenced our playing. We had to deal with space and silence....I think you can hear that in our music" Jonas Kocher
Choices
The first meeting on disc of two of the finest and most innovative electroacoustic instrumentalists in Germany, performing on reeds, trumpets, radio, speakers, and preparations. Three pieces from 2010, the first meeting on disc of two of thefinest and most innovative instrumentalists in Germany.
Explosion In a Shingle Factory
Debut vinyl by this post-Anschluss project. Basement experimental sound & collage recordings from Amherst, first released in about '93 or so. Tapes, keyboards, synthesizers, harp, piano, percussion, etc.
How Day Earnt Its Night
"Ben Reynolds is an English solo steel string guitarist and songwriter. In his solo instrumental works he draws upon the vast well of musical inspiration native to the British Isles as well as that found across the Atlantic and beyond. Ben's 2008 recording Two Wings was released on Portland, Oregon label Strange Attractors Audio House and focuses upon sprawling, meditative improvisations and concludes with the track 'Here Toucheth Blues' which appeared on Tompkins Square's Imaginational An…
Book of Beyond
"Ben Reynolds is one of the newer voices from the same UK scene that includes Ashtray Navigations and many of the VHF celebrities (Sunroof!, Vibracathedral Orchestra, Richard Youngs, etc.) It should be of little surprise then that Book of Beyond fits very nicely among the recordings of those other artists -- noise/junk drone. As in his previous recordings, this at times dissolves into more acoustic offerings, but the Fahey influence appears to be mostly gone, and what remains in the quie…
Music From The Impossible Salon
"For the past 25 years, New England's Idea Fire Company (IFCO) has positioned themselves at the frontline in the ageless battle for aesthetic purity. Founded by the enigmatic duo of Scott Foust (aka The Commander, aka The Last Great Man) and Karla Borecky, IFCO have built up a bulletproof discography, with each release refining the sound of its predecessor. They have been well served at home through their own Swill Radio imprint, and internationally, by Rund Um Den Watzmann, Entr'acte and…
Welcome Abroad
Vicki Bennett, under the People Like Us moniker, returns from several collaborations for her first solo album in several years. Stranded in the United States for an extended period after the Icelandic volcano eruption blocked her British homeland's airspace, Bennett derived thematic material of displacement, travel, and a longing forelsewhere, from the natural disaster that caused her own predicament. Volcanically marooned in Baltimore and NYC, Bennett utilized some of her "free" time to…