★Beta-lactam Ring Records
Songs Of Flowers & Skin
Doomgaze. Is that a thing? In ancient times "Songs Of Flowers & Skin" might have done time on 4AD, Creation, or even Sarah. Except of course, for the slender demonic tail woven into the melodies, which would have left a smoldering pile of pointy shoes in its wake. Though the tracks here are not metal, there is no lacking of heavy. The songs (yes, songs) simmer to a point just below explosion. Aidan chooses to excavate with atmosphere in lieu of caterwauling electricity, filling the spaces…
Somewhere There (Drone Compendium Two)
There is a tribal element to Arc's 2 long suites that feel somewhat like being stoned in Cologne in 1971. The trios of Aidan Baker, Christopher Kukiel, and Richard Baker return to the quiet with hushed tribal timbres, however, these ambiences are riveting in a way that that other ambiences are not, probably because the group does not think with an ambient attitude. This is the sound of mining midnight. In a universe where experimentalism is often just a nice way of saying "boring," hearin…
The Thirty Year Itch
Special limited vinyl release celebrating 30 years of life in THE LEGENDARY PINK DOTS together for EDWARD and PHIL to coincide with the 30th anniversary of the LPD. Two side-long tracks with Side A featuring a live performance of "Katrina"—a story set around improvised electronics and collages with Side B a krautrock insipired electronic collage. Issued as an edition of 350 copies on 180-gram vinyl and a custom made book bound sleeve.
White Nights/Drone Fields
Aidan Baker's anodyne ambiences almost act as aural dream machines on their own. But now Baker has collaborated with actual film makers for his Opus Dei, embodied in this double DVD set (one credited as Aidan Baker and the other to Nadja). Clocking in at nearly 6 hours, this in-home installation is the ultimate video aquarium for the acid-minded. Baker's thrum-scapes lay back and patiently coo mantras something akin to mid-period Nocturnal Emissions or Vidna Obmana, while spectacular visions wen…
The French Collection
To be issued mid Oct. 2010 as a double CD set housed in a custom made gatefold case with artwork by Jesse Peper. It started with a dusty box of DAT tapes. Perhaps it was years since anyone had listened to them despite the tantalising labels,"Paris #1", "Paris #2","Paris #3”... Indeed it was Paris where the Dots played their first residency in 1992. However , these tapes were a document of the Dots' one and only 3-nighter from the 10th to the 12th of March 1994 at the delightful Theatre Passage d…
The Shy Volcanic Society At The Bear And Bird Parade
A split album with Volcano the Bear and La STPO. VTB tracks 1-5 and STPO tracks 6-9. Bears and Birds, oh my! One side keeps the hot hot. And the other keeps the weird weird. VTB’s typically atypical entomological set scratches like a hive that has evolved just to the point of thumping out tribal fealties to its giant insect God-Thing. Environmentally ritualized sub-rhythms mix musique-concrete with actual concrete, forming freakishly minimal foundations for the hive of whatevers to swarm within.…
Mountains Among Us
This year sees the eruption of the Volcano with a myriad of releases leaving the town folk covered in a fine and mysterious silt of musical entropy. The limited release of "Mountains" finds our boy’s spelunking the creepiest of dream spawned caves, excavating crystalline fragments along the way, which are then set in beautiful mental jewelry appropriate for any formal occasion. Arpeggiated blurs and disinterred voices snap, crackle and pop as an unnamed rusted hulk is slowly pushed across an eve…
Amidst The Noise And Twigs
To say that Beta-lactam Ring records has released another typical Volcano the Bear album is to address only the initiated. Yet, it is meant to be a compliment. how best to describe the thrilling mixture of sounds, atmospheres and environments on offer? Those that have heard the group’s half dozen albums, and myriad other releases, have already embraced the unpredictability that remains this British aggrigate’s trademark. This newest offering is distilled, boiling elements from their previous dou…
Sonic Messenger
Limited ed. of 400 copies with a bonus album of music packaged in a custom designed full color gatefold case with a mounted 12 page booklet of bonus artwork. What if the Voyager space craft became sentient? Would it destroy humanity? Who is to say it wouldn’t become the most far-out musician of the galaxy? Expo ‘70’s sonic reach seems to extend past even the concept of space/time itself. One Eno Eon past normal, the patter of Expo ‘70’s dark matter squeaks and moans in wave forms, like the Dopp…
Anal Aura Gram(ophone)
An edition of 300 copies on 180 gram blue vinyl and packaged in a custom made book bound sleeve. Available late August 2009 (delayed from original release date due to nefarious pressing plant.) 'Anal Aura Gram' is a vinyl version of the long deleted CDR that came in limited quantities with the 2003 album 'Aural Anagram' and also features a bonus 7' disc of two remixes by Steven Severin (Siouxsie & The Banshees, The Glove). How many lives would be saved if every one had an Anal Aura Gram? Andrew …
Under The Jaguar Sun
Packaged in a full color custom made book bound 10 panel sleeve. A double vinyl version, "Chalchiuhtlicue" will also be issued with three mixes by Nadja and one mix by Edward Ka-Spel from the 2xCD version. That's right kids! Yes you can mix your own Nadja album! “Night and day, you are the one. Only you beneath the moon or under the Jaguar Sun…” Now you’re messing with a sun of a bitch. Let’s count backwards. The second disc in this set “Quetzalcoatl” diffuses into the air an alien vocabulary of…
Laugh China Doll
In 1984 when “Laugh China Doll” and “Dance, China Doll” first appeared, it was difficult enough to try and suss the Legendary Pink Dots. For the few, the proud, the brave who actually had some of the early cassettes, it was apparent that LPDs’ had some serious avant-garde habits. For those who only had the LPD records as cosmological references, the progressive accents left a bizarre and refreshing taste in the midst of the early post wave synth landscape. So what now of all this China Doll busi…
Belles Betes
“Belles Betes” features 4 new tracks fuzzed-out heaviness. The track ‘Green & Cold’ is currently streamable from Nadja’s MySpace page, and it sounds awesome - dark and brooding yet subtly melodic. Like most Nadja releases, “Belles Betes” is annoyingly limited. It’s being released as an LP and will be limited to 500 copies. Click the Beta-lactam link below for samples from each track and additional album info.
Uretakumo Nakunarutorika
The LSD March hare hops its winding way through another Wonderland of its own making with a brand new kraut influenced album "Uretakumo Nakunarutorika". These ever indefinable Japanese psych monsters have coughed up a syrup-soaked album of broken tribal psychedelia. Their distended view of plunderphonic percussion gurgles like a drum'n'base-jump into a vat of psilocybin wine. And then things get weird.
Chemical Playschool
2xCD housed in a full color custom made book bound sleeve and printed inner sleeve. Chemical Playschool Volumes 8 and 9 documents the largely unseen universe of The Legendary Pink Dots between the years 1990 and 1995. History has been amended where necessary. The cast for this voyage: The Silverman, Niels Van Hoornblower, Edward Ka-Spel, Martijn de Kleer, Father Pastorius, Cevin Key, Elke Skelter, Raymond Steeg, Ryan Moore, Maria, a brass band and Calyxx.
Summer Salt & Subway Sun
The expanded / re-issued version of "Summer Salt & Subway Sun" Ltd. edition of 400 in beautiful box with bonus-album "Wildcat Fights." The first 400 copies are packaged in a deluxe full color book bound box, 16 page lyric booklet , full color book bound cd cases and the bonus album "Wildcat Fights". Eyeless are an earful. Messrs Bates et Becker have miraculously come trembling through the decades musically unscathed. And yay though it is within the office of many bands to have precedents in…
Migraine Inducers / Antagonistic Music
Martyn Bates' elusive work as Migraine Inducers issued before his involvement with Eyeless in Gaza finally gets released on CD. Originally circulated on cassette in a tiny quantity as Dissonance/Antagonistic Music in 1979, it later saw a marginally wider release in the United States in somewhat abbreviated form. The complete version of this legendary album is included here, as is a second disc recorded in 1994 with Gaza partner Peter Becker to complete the work.
Le Temps Des Moissons
A long-lost classic of the Terry Rilesque (!) music and experimental world fusion. French saxophonist Ariel Kalma is one of the pioneers of early experimental electronic music; born and raised in Paris and studying recorder and saxophone from an early age, Kalma became interested in other musical traditions during his international travels in the early '70s, even going so far as to study circular breathing techniques from an Indian snake-charmer. His debut album, originally recorded in 1975 and …
Images / Zero Mix
STANDARD EDITION (220 page hard bound book with full color dust jacket, the album 'Zero Mix'). Hardbound book featuring paintings created to celebrate the release of the albums 'Angry Eelectric Finger'. The book also contains the album 'Zero Mix' packaged in a book bound cd case. Released in an edition of 1500 copies featuring full color images and a matte and gloss spot coating, plus full color dust jacket. Thou had best be ready when the angry eelectric finger points to YOU! THUS SPAKE nurse (…
stereo wasteland
Steven Stapleton's project, Nurse With Wound, harked back to the satirical and iconoclastic experiments of Dadaism and Futurism. His early, formative works (frequently shared with David Tibet of Current 93), such as Homotopy To Marie (1982) and Sylvie And Babs (1985), were similar in spirit to the Fugs' Virgin Forest, to Frank Zappa's breakneck operettas and to the Residents' multiform suites. His art of the collage turned decidedly cacophonous with works such as the EPs Gyllenskold (1984) and B…