sifting through heaven
Accepting the darkness can be a liberating experience. Realising, and struggling with just who we are and what world we live in requires it. By further complicating the fractured sense of beauty found on his droning 2022 release, ‘I dreamt we found a way’, Bristol-based composer, Rob Winstone creates a language that encapsulates the lifelong reach for our own personal heavens, along with the darkness and fear on which those foundations are built. Winstone’s instrumental palette continues to reac…
Magnetic Stencil/ 3
Tip! The third installment in an ongoing series of albums produced by John Wiese using an expanded ensemble of recorded sound contributions. Audio collage and experimental sonics featuring input from Mitchell Brown, James Fella, Nathan Howdeshell, Tim Kinsella, John Collins McCormick, Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson, Howard Stelzer, Dennis Tyfus, Katie Vonderheide, and C. Spencer Yeh.
Magnetic Stencil/ 2
Tip! "Instead of building towards a crescendo, Smyth and Wiese delight in sustained textures, then continue their patient growth … Scraped and plucked strings, caressed keys and percussive body knocks stand unwavering against waves of static, clusters of tinkling bells and spectral effects ... Throughout, the music’s flow remains profoundly atmospheric, almost oneiric, whether circling down a spiral of whisper-like low frequencies or being thrown around by violent stabs of noise. To finally brea…
Afterlife
*300 copies limited edition* Polish composer and sound artist Robert Piotrowicz presents his first work for Penultimate Press, one which outlines an uncanny sound world with a series of fictional organ pieces. Whilst resembling a pipe organ alongside other acoustic sources all material is strictly synthetic. The impression of air being swept through the bellows… false. The spatial organisation suggesting it was recorded in large physical space, false! The long middle solo passage in Noumen must…
Know: Delirium Atom Paths
One of the most exhilarating shows he’d ever done, guitarist Chris Sharkey came away from his performance at the Fusebox in Leeds feeling alive. Just a few days before the world would slow, and two weeks before life in London would stop, keyboardist and 577 mainstay Pat Thomas, drummer Luke Reddin-Williams and Sharkey would go on stage to play for the first time together, having discussed and planned nothing. The improvisation, a gamble, worked. Recorded in one 50-minute track, one album, the pr…
Níjar
Less than a year after the release of the album Rade, Paolo Angeli surprises with the sounds of his orchestral guitar, putting them at the service of a classic of Spanish literature: Bodas de Sangre, by Federico García Lorca. Níjar - recorded for the most part in the same studio session as the previous album and completed in February 2023 - goes back to the roots, that is, to the chronicle event that inspired the poet to write the work and that, in fact, took place in Níjar, in Andalusia. The Sa…
Origo
Big Tip! *240 copies limited edition* Audio dream directors Timo van Luijk (Af Ursin, Elodie) and Bart de Paepe (Sloow Tapes, Sylvester Anfang II) played as Ilta Hämärä on a MiMa night in Rotterdam (NL) in 2016. It was the day before Kraak fest, and they had a tour tape with them. A great night, as so many MiMa nights. Timeless Reality, featuring Family Underground, were also on the bill and on fire too: passport losing lo fi stoner garage. The toilet was broken, so everybody had to go to Hostel…
Augenmusik
*70 copies limited edition* Tape version of the already sold out Chocolate Monk cd-r from earlier this year. Maybe we tripped too long on Samara Lubelski's and Werner Nötzel's (Metabolismus) heady combination of space violin & weirdo electronics. Not for the faint of heart.
Mountain Diary
*60 copies limited edition* Not to be confused with the sometimes Captain Beefheart clarinetist of the same name, this particular Mascara Snake makes instrumental and atmospheric sound collages, influenced especially by Moondog, Penguin Cafe Orchestra and Luc Ferrari. As the snake sheds its skin Pacôme Genty reveals himself, who you might remember from the just as enigmatic La Non-pareille lp he released last year with his duo Des édens (together with Antoine Cortes).
Wuwei
*2023 stock* "From the beginning, the focus of the orchestra has been on listening, and improvising in the moment. A group of people truly playing together and focusing intently on the present can be a powerful thing. the use of natural objects (stones, shells, pine cones etc.) as opposed to more conventional musical instruments, can help the players to not fall back on learned habits of musical play. There is no canon or book of rules to refer to when using everyday things as sound makers, and …
Natura Naturans
*2023 stock* 'A CD of one man improvising on his self-designed and built instruments. Stringboards are essentially hunks of cast-off wood with tuning pegs and guitar strings attached. That description does not prepare one for what they sound like though. Distant bells, odd filings and ratchetings, electrical sounding buzzes, (these are acoustic instruments), giant out-of-tune dulcimers, prepared guitars, warped blues records...all these and more are conjured from these simple devices at the hand…
Severity
*30 copies limited edition C60 high quality real-time dubbing* Kevin Corcoran's release on Taiwanese tape label Karma Detonation.
A side: video works (percussion and field recordings)B side: feedback works (mixer and radios)
Tusk
'Tusk' is an absolute scorcher from New Zealand's beyond legendary purveyors of scuzzed noise rock The Dead C. This is blown-out rock and roll taken to the absolute excess, with wailing feedback mayhem, submerged vocals and floating percussion. Part of an astonishing run of killer records that Bruce Russell, Michael Morley, and Robbie Yeats churned out during the 90s. Totally rewires the possibilities of what rock music can be, and still sounds bloody brilliant. Tusk digs into the thought bubble…
The Operation Of The Sonne
The Dead C's trio of albums in the middle of their harsh '90s reality served for many as entry points to the band. Operation Of The Sonne, The White House, and Tusk received wider distribution than the band had ever seen before, and this was the first rays of them being considered amongst the most important rock bands of the 20th century. This trio of vinyl reissues capture their intensity and presence in a way that may even blow out the candle of the original pressings. Newly remastered by Lass…
Whitehouse
The Dead C's trio of albums in the middle of their harsh 90s reality served for many as entry points to the band. Operation Of The Sonne, The White House, and Tusk received wider distribution than the band had ever seen before, and this was the first rays of them being considered amongst the most important rock bands of the 20th century. This trio of vinyl reissues capture their intensity and presence in a way that may even blow out the candle of the original pressings. Newly remastered by Lasse…
Resolve
Following several releases over the past decade of archival Arnold Dreyblatt & The Orchestra of Excited Strings material and collaborations with other ensembles, on labels including Black Truffle, Choice Records, Megafaun and Superior Viaduct, Drag City is excited as well to be able to introduce Resolve, the first release of new Excited Strings music from Arnold Dreyblatt since 2002. Resolve acts in dialogue with the minimalist inspirations of the first Arnold Dreyblatt & The Orchestra of Excite…
Power Failures
Huge Tip! The New York based duo of Che Chen and Rick Brown, 75 Dollar Bill, return with Power Failures, their first full length since 2020. Issued as a beautiful double LP by Karlrecords, and possibly their best record to date - taking on expanded explorations and a greater sense of abstraction - across its four sides we encounter Chen and Brown interweaving hypnotic polyrhythms and complex tonal collisions, with occasional (and brilliant) contributions from "Little Big Band" mainstays Steve Ma…
Underground Overlays From The Cistern Chapel
"This is where you have been forever and will always be forever." Stuart Dempster, speaking about what it feels like to be in a cistern where time seems to stop. Stuart Dempster created Underground Overlays From The Cistern Chapel in the same cistern where the legendary Deep Listening album was recorded. Reverberating with powerful, deep tones, this double LP is intended as a companion to the acclaimed Oliveros/Dempster/Panaiotis album Deep Listening. Underground Overlays From The Cistern Chapel…
Solo For Tamburium
With Solo for Tamburium, Hennix plays and manipulates recordings of her precisely tuned and continuously sustained tamburas through a keyboard interface, fusing tones into psychoacoustic textures in the style of her early modal works
Love’s Lesson
Fifth vinyl album (there have been four cassettes as well) by this Baltimore-based duo with international roots. Zomes began as a solo project by Asa Osbourne (ex-Lungfish, The Pupils), and recorded mostly solo drone-based instrumentals for several years. While performing at a festival in Stockholm, Asa met vocalist Hanna Olivegren, who shared his musical conceptions. Zomes's first record as a duo was 2013's Time Was (Thrill Jockey), and they have remained a two-piece ever since. The music on Lo…