★Ideal Recordings
In Love With The Extreme
Joachim Nordwall and Henrik Rylander pound out a powerful new Saturn And The Sun album on the former’s iDEAL Recordings, following up an album for The Tapeworm and the death of their band, The Skull Defekts, with a monotonous, harsh missive from the cold North. Recorded at the legendary Gothenburg Sound Experiment in 2017, ‘In Love With The Extreme’ finds the duo explorating core influences, consolidating everything from ‘60s minimalism to early techno and tribal musics into a densely textured,…
Ultra
**Edition of 200 hand numbered black vinyl copies** Sci-fi soundtrack styles from Swedish synth-fondler Johan Öhman Sollin, landing square between the styles of early 0PN, Hype Williams, and James Ferraro. Marking his debut for iDEAL after more than a decade of trading as Johan Rohbau, Time Deleters, Knife and Ape, Minimen, and Sphinxes for a handful of secretive labels, J.Ö.S. draws from classic pulpy ‘80s cyber-goth and video nasty horror soundtracks for a personalised and totally immersive su…
Monstrance
Monstrance documents Mika Vainio & Joachim Nordwall reshaping guitars, drums and incendiary electronics at Einstürzende Neubauten’s Berlin studio back in 2010. The results were originally issued by Touch in 2013, with this new 2LP edition now arriving on Nordwall’s iDEAL label five years later as a posthumous tribute and reminder of his erstwhile collaborator. In our opinion, it’s one of Vainio’s most crucial and absorbing collaborations; moving away from ice-cold electronic precision and into a…
Ideal Acid
No hype, this record is the maddest belter you’ll hear this year. A rinse thru three hundred and three acid cherries pitted and sequenced, tweak for tweak, into the only rave weapon you’ll ever need. Taking Evol's obsession with Roland’s squelchy grey box to an ultimate, logical conclusion that leaves dancefloors turned utterly inside out and begging for track ID’s, it’s the kind of idea that has been floated in raves, smoking areas and afterparties for the past 20 years but has never been execu…
Weightless
Hugely tipped debut LP from Jasss; a measured, rugged blend of industrial dub, African and dark jazz inspirations that comes highly recommended if you’re into more abstracted and experimental electronic/dancefloor excursions or the work of Christoph De Babalon, Toresch, Mecanica Popular, Throbbing Gristle etc. Very much an antecedent of Spanish industrialists such as Diseño Corbusier, Xeerox / Krishna Goineau, or Mecanica Popular/Randomize, Jasss firmly builds on that heritage with a uniquely pe…
Vain
All analog - no computers or instrument overdubs - The prodigal return of Venezuelan artist Carlos Giffoni to the avant-electronic music scene he was instrumental in shaping with the seminal, hybridising No Fun Fest and No Fun Productions label, which was home to debut releases by Oneohtrix Point Never, and classics from Haswell and Prurient during the late ‘00s to early part of this decade. If yr into 0PN or Keith Fullerton Whitman, this album f u c k i n g r u l e sCarlos’ first new release i…
A Page To A Corner (Ep)
**Edition of 200** The unfathomable quantity of Pan Daijing meets Werner Dafeldecker’s mercurial sound art on this surprise, limited edition 7" pressing.
Leading on from her heavily arresting Lack album for the PAN label, A Page To A Corner is Daijing's first collaborative release. The title track is a lethargically hypnagogic thing, with Daijing lamenting an unseen force, bound into a mesh of monotone drones and keening strings to ultimately quease-inducing effect.
On the B-side, Daughters…
Riot
Hand-numbered LP. Edition of 400 copies. Re-dition of this John Duncan 1984 le Riot album: re-recorded, re-mixed at EMS and expanded with material that didn’t make the initial pressings, all taken from original 8-track master tape - which required them to revive obsolete machinery - and all re-mastered by Rashad Becker for this release; which, according to the legendary avant-garde agitator himself, is finally packaged in artwork befitting of his vision. Or take it straight from the horse’s gob:…
Macbeth
Ideal follow up aces by Jasss and Vanligt Folk with a side of hand-cranked, lo-fi anti-music in Gabi Losoncy and Allen Mozek's (Twin Stumps, No Intention) Good Area, coming off the curled back of their sides for Kye, Recital, and Hanson Records. They sound like a sedated Yeah You or Smegma jamming with anguished alley cats on a battery of garbage cans.As the label explain:'Once upon a time, there were two very difficult people who loved music very much. They loved music so much that they stayed …
Mantra / Ur Sonate
**edition of 200, numbered*Two new vocal based recordings by the conceptual, and ever challenging artist John Duncan. "Mantra" is a piece by himself and is a choral drone that is highly capturing and transcendent. "Ur Sonate" is a classic sound poem by dadaist Kurt Schwitters composed between 1922-1932. The piece was banned from being recorded for many years (by the Kurt und Ernst Schwitters Stiftung). This album is something new for Duncan, but also in a way connected to his "Bitter Earth…
Yamaha Deluxe
Bob Bellerue is a New York based composer, sound activist and artist. His, to us, highly important releases “Brokelyn” (LP, Love Earth Music 2014) and “Damned Piano” (2xLP, Anarchymoon Recordings 2015) were quietly released and distributed but left a deep impact on everyone it reached. The iDEAL office were very happy to receive an offer to release more piano manipulations by mr Bellerue, further examples of one of the most interesting electro-acoustic noise artists active today. His acti…
Dead Zones
Jean-Louis Huhta (Dungeon Acid) and Ideal label head Joachim Nordwall unite once again as High Boys for an EP influenced by their love of old school acid, bad vibes, dub 7”s, William S Burroughs and 80s industrial music. The pair are already bandmates of sorts as part of the mighty Skull Defekts, but anyone familiar with Dungeon Acid’s much sought after catalogue or Nordwall’s sprawling, eclectic interests will no doubt already have their ears pricked for this one. The results are pretty much in…
Study For A Monument
Gothenburg-based artist Johan Zetterquist delivers his debut album for the excellent iDEAL label, unspooling three extended pieces shaped like sound sculptures. It's a profound drone metal variant recorded on a Gibson SG, amplifier and effects, live with no overdubs, slowly unfolding to reveal blistered shards of sound that recall everything from Stephen O’Malley to Maryanne Amacher's seminal Sound Characters. Zetterquist gets a huge amount of mileage out of the contrast between extremes produce…
Feedback Overload Unit
A chokingly powerful session of elemental feedback noise from one of iDEAL’s foundational players. Arriving some 13 years after his first missive for Joachim Nordwall’s infamous label, it’s a stoically economical exercise in discipline and control, unflinchingly documenting Henrik Rylander’s improvised recordings of a no-input mixing desk undergoing a severe stress test in realtime. Big recommendation if you're into anything from Mika Vainio to Sonic Youth's feedback sessions...
The lates…
Malign
Swedish noise agitator Dan Johannsson bothers his good pals at iDEAL with a brilliant new LP following his Aska split album with Puce Mary in 2013. Malign by nature and intent, his overdue return to Joachim Nordwall’s label is a sorely strung out and decayed thing, a dank space hankering to be inhabited by listeners who want or need to be pushed into uncomfortable headspaces. If you're into anything from Jandek to Wolf Eyes to The Caretaker - this one's for you.
Malign trades in a sense of…
Compuriddim
Andreas Tilliander (Mokira, TM404) returns with a plunging set of skewed techno dubs for Joachim Nordwall's iDEAL, his first new release for the label since the Bias Line 7” in 2010, and the Hateless album released a decade ago. RIYL Peder Mannerfelt, Frak, Tapes, Pole, Basic Channel! Andreas Tilliander has gone some way to making his studio a bastion of dub music within his home city, Stockholm ever since emerging with the Cliphop album for Raster-Noton in 2000 and subsequently releasing a whol…
Regression
Wolf Eyes’ Nate Young’s Regression series has provided some of the most compelling dread-electronics spewed out by the North American underground in years, with instalments released on Demdike Stare’s DDS label and Aaron Dilloway's Hanson, as well as NNA Tapes and others. It all began back in 2009 with the first volume issued by Joachim Nordwall’s Ideal label, an incredible set that’s now being released on vinyl for the first time ever, just in time for Wolf Eyes newly minted (Warp sponsored) Lo…
Rise
"..to shape a new consciousness, one in which cooperation triumphs over domination, and humility before nature's complexity challenges technological hubris. to move on and leave the religious, materialist and supremacist phases behind us. most dimensions are yet to be explored. the real human potential has yet to be revealed. the process of liberation has only just begun. rise, rise, rise.." (final section of Dave Phillips' liner notes, spread across the four sides of the two inlays)
Mannerlaatta
Mannerlaatta (Tectonic Plate) is Mika Vainio’s soundtrack for a “74 minute lettrist film made entirely without a camera” by Finnish film maker Mika Taanila; his 3rd following their previous collaborations, A Physical Ring (2002) and Return of the Atom (2015). The music was written very early on in the film’s two and a half year development, and subsequently held a strong sway over the rhythm of the film’s editing and visual narration - which takes place as a series of black and white images made…
Trance Below The Streets
Recorded in a Brooklyn basement during a couple of cold December days in 2014, the collaboration between Ryan Martin (DAIS Records, modular synth wizard) and Joachim Nordwall (iDEAL, analogue synth lover) became something very special, raw, intense and powerful. There is an hypnotic feel to it, that may lead you into a wanted or unwanted state of trance. Harsh, yet meditative (and at times beautiful) electronic music masterfully engineered by Kyle Keays Hagerman and mastered by Kris Lapke…