Rock /
Kollektion 01: Sky Records compiled by Tim Gane: Volume A
LP edition, split into two volumes sold separately. To provide an overview of the various musical styles in which Bureau B specializes, the label launches a new compilation series entitled Kollektion. Each release in this series will be curated by a musician perfectly suited to the task. The first kick-off release will be: Kollektion 01: Sky Records, compiled by Tim Gane. The erstwhile Stereolab mastermind delves through the archives of the legendary German Krautrock label. About Sky Records…
The Twelfth Spectacle
A whopping new release from New Zealand no technique trio The Dead C is finally ready. Morley, Russell and Yeats's The Twelfth Spectacle has just arrived, and collects live recordings from the last ten years onto four LPs for Grapefruit records's subscription series.The Twelfth Spectacle includes: Arena, Recorded at La Dynamo Pantin, Paris and Les Ateliers Cl, April 2013; Permanent LSD, recorded at London's Luminaire in December 2006; This Century Sucks, recorded at The Smell, Los Angeles, March…
Jack Ruby
"Back when Thurston and I were working on our book about the New York No Wave scene, a key mystery we hoped to unravel was the one surrounding the band Jack Ruby. I knew George Scott had been in the band, along with Chris Gray, but we were never able to nail down any hard info. Lydia Lunch and Rudolph Grey both had blazing memories of their weirdness, originality and power, but no one could turn up anything solid. Time passed, the book came out and -- chuffed by the fact we'd name-checked th…
Tutto deve finire
A band from near Rome, Seconda Genesi, have become famous among prog fans for one of the rarest (and much looked after) Italian albums of the 70's, Tutto deve finire, released in 1972 in just 200 copies, all with different painted covers, that has finally achieved a vinyl reissue thirty years after its initial release.The album is very good, with nice flute, Hammond organ and guitar playing to the fore, starting with the impressive Ascoltarsi nascere with a stunning rhythm acceleration, a…
Blat Brut
Amazing previously unreleased 1976 recordings by psychedelic progsters Blat Brut. Highly touched by the works of Jimi Hendrix, Traffic, John Mayall, Pink Floyd or Jethro Tull, the band melted all their influences into a unique sound and delivered extended heady instrumental jams with a tight, ferocious drum & bass backline under guitar pyrotechnics and psyched-out flute arrangements. This band was not only formed by its four musicians, their line-up also included two sound engineers who built th…
Teenage boys
In the past 10 or so years Ignatz has explored all visible cracks and overlapping layers between (or underneath) folk music, blues, singersongwriter and psychedelia. It is a pleasure to see him take this beauty to yet another level by unleashing 2 dying dogs to join him as a backing band, pushing his tunes into directions Les Rallizes Dénudés took a left and forgot their mountain of distortion, to end up in a dessert where Teenage Boys dance their first slow. De Stervende Honden know their place…
Live at the Hideout
During the month of January in 2013 Bitchin Bajas held residency at the Hideout in Chicago, IL. Performing every Tuesday of the month, playing two different sets each week. Collaborating with friends, playing with films in quadraphonic, using the Bitchitronics set up live and changing where the performance took place in the bar helped vary each set. Using several recording devices, all rehearsals and performances of each week were documented. Later it was all edited and mixed making these six si…
Apropos Cluster
“Apropos Cluster” was released in Coralville, Iowa, in deepest provincial America. Youthful enthusiast Russ Curry (sic) set up the Curious Music label on his own initiative to release this very album. Emboldened by the spirit of the independent movement, he paid for manufacturing himself and took care of CD distribution, as well as doing his best to ensure that a few copies made their way to Europe. In common with so many independent label operations, Russ Curry lacked the financial clout to mar…
s/t
White Poppy, the “experimental therapeutic pop” project from British Columbian inner-peacenik Crystal Dorval, has been evolving fresh forms for a couple years now. Last winter, packing a satchel full of four-track tapes, she ventured out from her bedroom haven and boarded a boat across the Strait of Georgia to the town of Ladysmith, on Vancouver Island, to The Noise Floor Recording Studio, to mastermind and mix the ten deluxe, delirious dream-gaze gems comprising her self-titled full-length debu…
Foz
A couple of Autumns ago, on the back of a series of concerts and hosting a workshop togheter in Oporto, the duo of Toshimaru Nakamura and Manuel Mota recorded an informal session. From that natural affinity resulted Foz. It may be considered an historic document under the premise that it's Nakamura's first fully improvised, recording solely on electric, guitar in a decade. Throughout two long pieces the duo on call carves a well balanced harmony between more reflexive and purely physical moment…
Mantricoom
About 1 hour and a half of droning doom/ dark ambient on 2 cd in a de luxe handmade packaging by Luigi Mennella. As a long, phlegmatic journey towards annihilation, "Mantricoom" opens the door to a new perception of the union of ecstatic rapture and pain. With this rotten, obsessive, lysergic double album Croce (ex-keyboard player from metal combo Power Symphony) starts a new path among the meanders of the most viral sludge core, the meditative drone doom and a post-industrial sound corroded by …
Benji
Mark Kozelek is back with a new Sun Kil Moon album featuring Sonic Youth's Steve Shelley, Jen Wood (who has worked with the Postal Service), Will Oldham, and Owen Ashworth (formerly known as Casiotone for the Painfully Alone, now of Advance Base).
Sub Contra
People of the North is Kid Millions (drums) and Bobby Matador (keyboard, synth, vocals) of Oneida, and Sub Contra is their Thrill Jockey debut. While their sound, like Oneida's, is constantly shifting and absorbing new concepts and ideas, Sub Contra is a work that fully embraces tumult and darkness in startling and dramatic ways. People of the North have been an active entity since 2003, but it wasn't until 2010 with the release of Deep Tissue on their own Brah imprint and Steep Formations, whic…
A Gourd of Gold
2013 release "From the time we started Latitudes, we’ve held a secret wish list of bands that we intended to lure into our studio. We’ve cut a major notch in our bedpost by finally scoring with Arbouretum, a band that meets universal approval at Latitudes HQ. Arbouretum offer up four cover versions of the brilliant Gordon Lightfoot, the oft-overlooked Canadian singer-songwriter who helped define the folk-rock sound of the Sixties and Seventies. The highlight of the session is unsurprisingly the …
Homeless cats
The Swedish psychedelic trance-rock pioneers new album - Homeless Cats. Eleven new boundless tracks with organic music for open minds. A 40-year anniversary is actually rather on the small. Back in 1967 the guitarist Bo Anders Persson had already started his Terry Riley-inspired underground band Parson Sound with the bass player Torbjorn Abelli and drummer Thomas Mera Gartz, amongst others. They evolved into International Harvester, then Harvester, and finally striking root as Trad Gras och Sten…
Los Doroncos
A monument to Japanese rock! Los Doroncos are a Tokyo supergroup formed by Kiyohiro Takada (Les Rallizes Denudes), Kawaguchi Masami (Dustbreeders, New Rock Syndicate), Mako Hsegawa (Maher Shalal Hash Baz). This is their debut Lp and it is just amazing. 4 long pieces that evolve into beautiful electric jams: past, present and future of the Tokyo underground sound are all in here! Released in an edition of 150 copies on the 8mm Records label. Housed in handmade cover."It’s a lot more laid back a…
Appalachian excitation
The meeting of composer Arnold Dreyblatt and psych-folk trio Megafaun shouldn’t be seen as unlikely just because it’s cross-generational, or even (arguably) cross-genre. Such categorizations have to be set aside before taking in their Appalachian Excitation. Born in New York in 1953, Dreyblatt came up under such lauded experimental groundbreakers as Alvin Lucier, Pauline Oliveros and La Monte Young, obtaining a Master’s degree in composition from Wesleyan University. Now based in Berlin, where h…
Live At Doornroosje (Nijmegen 1982)
Recordings of a stand-out gig at Doornroosje in Nijmegen (NL). By 1982 De Brassers had been playing in almost every small public space or squad in the area and logically they had gathered a cult following. Sporadicly they also performed in The Netherlands. Doornroosje was / is the club where underground music groups performed before they became well-known, especially the 80s were an interesting period with Joy Division, Nick Cave and many local punk / new wave bands hitting the stage. Here we fi…
Rock Power
Reissue of an extremely rare and essential Sunroof! CD-R released during a European tour in 2003 on Matthew Bower's own imprint, Rural Electrification Program (REP). On this LP, Bower is joined on guitar by Mick Flower (Vibracathedral Orchestra and Flower-Corsano Duo) and the result was once qualified as Sunroof's rock record and its tribute to Neil Young and AC/DC (hence the title). RockPower is a very singular record because it documents a very short time period in the M. Bower/Sunroof! evolut…
Live at the Cairo High Cinema Institute
I saw him at a street party in Giza where a few hundred people had amassed to dance and scream into the night. Flanked by Khaled Mando and Islam Tata, his two drummers pounding furiously asthe signature tone of his synth intensified for almost two hours, Islam Chipsy demonstrated his completely revolutionary take on modern Egyptian Shaabi. The sound was raw and distorted, thevolume was deafening, and the energy was high. Thirty minutes into the set, the trio pulled out blindfolds and put them on…