Quartz Hive
*Black vinyl pressing of 200 numbered (inside the jacket) copies.* Generic sleeve with pasted on front and rear jacket sheets. "Beautiful third LP helmed by multi-instrumentalist/tape manipulator, Brian Lucas. Following up on 2021's The Incandescent Switch (FTR 606LP) and 2022's The Air's Chrysalis Chime (FTR 675LP), Quartz Hive is a post-pandemic swirl of cloud sound based on the kind of music that makes all your inner walls melt like wax. Lucas has a wonderful way of creating clusters of textu…
The Faintest Hint
2024 Repress. Ai Aso's immaculately crafted form of minimalist pop music skirts the edges of tensity with the manner and with the skill of a tight rope walker, calmly balancing repeatedly at every step, with a combination of surety and the risk of a slip, a fall, and an unknown uncoiling of events. Aso's capacity to capture, or inspire, the tension and attention from within the listener and observer are quite pronounced. At Aso's concert the performance constantly teeters near the brink, a sharp…
Lone
2024 Repress. Tokyo's Ai Aso is a Japanese psychedelic pop singer-songwriter whose work has a whisper-thin acid-folk quality to it. She started performing as a solo singer around 2000. Her solo work, infrequent collaborations with White Heaven members You Ishihara and Michio Kurihara, Yurayura Teikoku, and Boris bring a level of fragility and hypnotism to the stage, recalling lost memories, small flavors of Coil, and serial playing on the verge of evaporation. As for her recent activities, she h…
Morning Music
Mia Doi Todd is known for her quiet, haunting songs, usually conveyed through her evocative and instantly recognizable voice. With a deep body of work spanning twelve albums, and as a formidable collaborator on records by Laraaji, Tunde Adebimpe (TV on the Radio), Scientist, and more recently with André 3000 and Carlos Niño on New Blue Sun, Mia is an essential element in the richly woven musical tapestry of her native Los Angeles. Morning Music is an instrumental, ambient experience unlike anyth…
Chewing Hides the Sound
Double CD, expanded edition. Snakefinger surely needs not much of an introduction. Born Philip Charles Lithman in London, he moved to San Francisco in 1971. His roots lie in the British blues scene, but he soon became friends with The Residents who also gave him the name Snakefinger based on a photograph of Lithman performing, in which his finger looks like a snake about to attack his violin. In 1972 Lithman returned to England and formed the pub rock band Chilli Willi and the Red Hot Peppers. A…
C.D.
Colonia Dignidad was the settlement of a German evangelical sect. After being prosecuted for child abuse in Germany, the group fled to Chile in 1961. Like similar religious sects, it was characterized by the outward appearance of a unified, godly community with well-tempered cultural activities and social welfare, but inwardly and in its environment by oppression, sexual abuse, and exploitation. In the 1970s, it unquestioningly inserted itself into Pinochet's regime of terror, aiding in the impr…
Moon Set, Moon Rise
Two old souls creating music not of this plane, taking you to a dream world...
Glow
Introducing De Mond's debut LP, 'Glow.' Stijn Wybouw (also known as Kramp) and Arno de Bock (who provided drums for Hermann among other projects) throw you into a maelstrom of bold sounds and rhythms. From squiggly synth bursts to kaleidoscopic loops, they push the outer parameters of 21st-century musical art.
El Jardín de las Matemáticas (The Garden of Mathematics)
*300 copies limited edition* Penultimate Press is proud to unveil a global collaboration that harnesses earth with combined members and atmospheres of Santiago, Chile, Salsipuedes, Argentina, Melbourne, Australia and Berlin, Germany. El Jardín de las Matemáticas (The Garden of Mathematics) was written and recorded by Alvaro Daguer (Glorias Navales/A Full Cosmic Sound/ETCS Records), Pablo Picco (Bardo Todol/Bolinga Everest Records), Tomás Salvatierra (Glorias Navales) and Mark Harwood (Penultimat…
Hoo-Ha
Extraordinary, free, and expressive, the trio woo (Wodrascka Owczarek Orins) is the result of the moment and fortunate encounters. Paulina Owczarek and Peter Orins have been playing together for a few years, meeting in Berlin in Satoko Fujii’s orchestra, then venturing into a duo, producing music of subtle gestures, barely perceptible movements, but also of raw and liberated energy. Christine Wodrascka meets Peter Orins within the Franco-American ensemble Sangliers, with Dave Rempis, Keefe Jacks…
The Theory of Constraints
The Theory of Constraints (TOC) is a framework of interdisciplinary knowledge, methods, and management tools for organizations. It starts from the premise that imbalance is inevitable but also desirable. The flow management method of the Theory of Constraints, called Drum – Buffer – Rope, involves pacing the release of manufacturing orders to the pace of the bottleneck to avoid excess work in progress and reduce cycle times, while ensuring that parts arrive sufficiently early to never stop the s…
In the Merry Month of May
Huge Tip! In the Merry Month of May is the final studio recording of the late, great Tony Conrad, and the first duo release with Jennifer Walshe, one of Conrad’s most important collaborators in the final decade of his life. Befitting these two absurdly gifted hell-raisers, this is a wild, improvisatory flaying of song, with Walshe’s clarion voice at the heart of the enterprise. The sheer sonic force of opener “In the Merry Month of May” recalls the ecstatic charge of Conrad’s Slapping Pythagoras…
Ha Ha Laughing Record
James Twig Harper Johnston's tribute to the legendary Okeh laughing record. (if ya don't know...look it up!) It's funny (pun intended), I get a message from Harper saying he's working on a "Laughing Record" lathe... I'm like.. "Woah, I was just working on some "giggle loops" myself... I'll send em over!", "Perfect!" . A few more giggles from our friend Nora and he's in monkey business! He mixes those w/ some classic canned laugh tracks and sends em thru his new computerized "Anti-System" and get…
Medea
Duo in the mirror that, in a continuous game of doubling and multiplication, ventures into another world, dense with unexpectedness and vital thrills. Sun Ra and post-rock, as well as Chicago experimentation and echoes of the world of Suzanne Ciani and minimal music, are the hints one can sense while listening to Medea, a journey to the edge and beyond. Star Splitter's new album comes five years after the debut album, a period in which the two artists experimented with the infinite possibilities…
Svart/Hvitt
*2024 stock* "Put on the circuit via Oslo / Norway-based imprint Conrad Sound on December 4th, 2k20 is "Svart / Hvitt", the sophomore album effort created by the multi-membered group named The Touchables which includes a plethora of artists from the countries Jazz and Contemporary Music scene with at least one of its members - Martin Taxt - being a household name to readers of these pages for his deep explorations of microtonal tuba performances. Split in four subsequently numbered, unnamed part…
Aporia
Sissi Rada's humble manifestations of the miracle of life, the troubles of love, the thoughts that span through a human mind while performing simple tasks, educated by her love and natural inclination to poetry, read like small vignettes, or marginalia notes on a diary that is of constant flux. Recorded, mixed and produced by Sissi alone, in her Athens’ home, using a spartan but powerful instrumentation of harp, a Prophet synthesizer, and first and foremost her intimate and enchanting voice, ‘Ap…
All My People
Tip! Revised eight track re-issue of Maria Somerville's much lauded debut album. This new edition features an additional cut 'Lakes' - a 5+ minute blown out instrumental recorded live on tour in 2019. "Stirring and beautiful songs, with a consistent optimism underlying even the murkiest of moments." Recorded in Connemara and Dublin. Mixed by Brendan Jenkinson. Mastered by The Bastard.
Nerve Plexus
*25 copies limited edition* Originally released on tape by the Belgian label Dadaist Tapes, Nerve Plexus takes on an improvisational approach; constructed from a blend of homemade instruments, guitar and percussion; the sounds are uniquely placed and sculpted into jumpy abstractions and atmospheric forms generating a synthesis of genres. Recorded and mixed at ZIG Systems, Hudson Valley. New York 20-21 Mastered by Paul Gold at Salt Mastering, Brooklyn New York. Lacquer cut by Rich Flores at NYLC,…
What Is Not Strange?
Five years on from “Nue”, his collaboration with his father, Yoshi Wada, and friends, Tashi Wada returns to RVNG with “What Is Not Strange?”, a startling new adventure in sound. Riding a razor's edge between experimental music and left-field song-craft, the album's eleven compositions enlist an all-star cast of collaborators - Julia Holter, Corey Fogel, Ezra Buchla, and Devin Hoff - to forge new water and create one of the most startling and mysterious records of the year.
Caverne Sonore
The explorer Walter Maioli makes his most amazing adventure, the journey to the center of the Earth. Retracing the exploits of the Platonic demiurge, he identifies in the cave the deepest meaning of myth. Primordial sounds, not shadows, are at the center of this magical path straddling geology and Paleolithic polyphony. The recordings between 1985 and 2002 capture the sonic imperceptibility of the great subterranean womb, investigate the secret dialogue between the trickling of pond waters and t…