★Superior Viaduct
In the Sea
Ellen Fullman began developing The Long String Instrument in her St. Paul, Minnesota studio in 1980 and moved to Brooklyn the following year. Inspired by composer and instrument builder Harry Partch, Fullman’s large-scale work creates droning, organ-like overtones that are as unique in the world of sound as her vision of the instrument itself.Along with her 1985 debut album—appropriately titled The Long String Instrument—Fullman’s only output in the 1980s would be two self-released cassettes, In…
Songs & Melodies, 1973-1977
Since the mid-1960s, Jon Gibson has played a key role in the development of American avant-garde music. As a versatile reed player, he has performed with everyone from Steve Reich and Philip Glass to Terry Riley and La Monte Young. In the 1970s, Gibson would emerge as a minimalist composer in his own right and release two exceptional albums, Visitations and Two Solo Pieces, on Glass' Chatham Square imprint.Songs & Melodies brings together recordings from 1973 to 1977 (mostly previously unrelease…
July 15, 1972
Limited to 750 numbered copies. Comes with poster. For over half a century, Takehisa Kosugi was of the most unique and enduring figures in the Japanese underground. As an art student in Tokyo in the early 1960s, he joined the Fluxus-styled performance unit Hi Re Centre and then founded the improvisational ensemble Group Ongaku, but his most legendary project was The Taj Mahal Travellers – a multicellular organism that included Kosugi, Ryo Koike, Yukio Tsuchiya, Seiji Nagai, Michihiro Kimura, Tok…
San Francisco's First And Only Rock 'N' Roll Band
Limited edition translucent blue vinyl. One of the most savagely cool and confrontational punk acts in history, Crime famously dubbed themselves "San Francisco's First and Only Rock 'N' Roll Band." This inflammatory claim was supported by unpredictable live shows that often ended in riots. In 1978, film producer Larry Larson captured Crime in their natural habitat, the dimly-lit nightclub Mabuhay Gardens. They looked and sounded more severe than anyone in San Francisco was ready for. The foota…
American In Me
This seminal '77 band's unmistakable anthem was produced by Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones and originally released in late 1979, a few months after the group had broken up. As singer Penelope Houston fiercely declares, "Ask not what you can do for your country, what's your country been doing to you." These songs remain some of the most pivotal sounds of punk's formative era. Limited edition translucent red vinyl.
Outside The Dream Syndicate
Tony Conrad and Faust’s classic minimalist totem drones on in a new edition presented by the brilliant Superior Viaduct reissue label. A masterpiece for dreams
After Its Own Death / Walking in a Spiral
**CD Edition** Grouper’s Liz Harris quietly released this album of primordial soundscapes a few weeks ago under the new Nivhek alias, initially released in a private edition that vanished almost as quickly as it was announced, After its own death / Walking in a spiral towards the house is presented here in a beautiful second edition on Superior Viaduct's imprint W.25TH.** Opaque assemblages of Mellotron, guitar, field recordings, tapes and broken FX pedals by Pacific Northwest artist Liz Harris,…
... Is Eternal Life
Drummer, composer and poet William Hooker has been a tireless force in free improvised music for over 40 years. He emerged from New York's loft jazz scene in the mid-'70s, part of a generation of artists fueled by the social, political and cultural frustrations of their era. This second wave of American free jazz would push relentlessly into new territories – collaborating in a variety of non-traditional settings, establishing their own labels, venues, etc. – all in an effort at creative self-de…
The Quality Of Mercy Is Not Strnen
In process of stocking. After two singles for Fast Product, Leeds art-punk collective The Mekons signed with Virgin Records in 1979. The band would have to borrow gear from their mates Gang Of Four to record their major label debut. In classic Mekons style, the album’s back cover featured a photo of Gang Of Four instead of themselves. As Simon Reynolds writes, “The Quality Of Mercy Is Not Strnen got a mixed reception at the time. Listening to it now, though, the first LP sounds more of a piece w…
Three For Shepp
In 1966, when Marion Brown was ready to make his first record as a leader, he was standing on the shoulders of giants. Formative associations with Ornette Coleman and Sun Ra established Brown as a saxophonist to watch, and he had already appeared on free jazz landmarks Archie Shepp's Fire Music and John Coltrane's Ascension. Originally released on Impulse!, Brown's debut lays down three startling originals and three tunes by Shepp – echoing his mentor's 1964 homage to Coltrane, Four For Trane. …
In the Same Room
With This Kind Of Punishment, Graeme Jefferies and Peter Jefferies produced some of most adept DIY sounds to emerge from New Zealand's 1980s post-punk scene. After their phenomenal self-titled debut and classic A Beard Of Bees, the brothers would make one last album together, In The Same Room. Originally released in 1987 on Flying Nun, In The Same Room is perhaps the straightest rock offering in TKP's esteemed catalogue. Opening track "Immigration Song" expertly pairs jagged guitars with wrathf…
Inscrutably Obvious
A lost electronic gem of UK post punk vintage resurfaces with Kevin Harrison’s 1981 debut ‘Inscrutably Obvious’
Iceland
Originally released in 1979, Iceland is Richard Pinhas' third solo album and his first following the breakup of Heldon. While moving away from the maximalism of his old band, paring down Heldon's hybrid of otherworldly sci-fi imagery and pummeling psych-prog riffs, the journey through Iceland is decidedly more inward. Consisting of longer, brooding synth-based pieces as well as short proto-industrial études and interstitial sketches, Iceland features Pinhas' delay-ridden electric guitar, pulsat…
The Rough Trade Singles
The Rough Trade Singles collects The Fall's four singles recorded for this influential label in 1980 and 1983 – How I Wrote 'Elastic Man' / City Hobgoblins, Totally Wired / Putta Block, The Man Whose Head Expanded / Ludd Gang and Kicker Conspiracy – none of which appeared on any of the band's studio LPs. With 7-inches being the era's vehicle for buzzing communiqués, The Fall would use the format for short-form, standalone works rather than as mere promotional devices for forthcoming albums. "To…
Catch-Wave
Composer, multi-instrumentalist and mixed-media artist, Takehisa Kosugi has stood on the forefront of the Japanese avant-garde for over six decades. In the 1960s, he was part of Japan’s first improvisational music collective, Group Ongaku, and contributed to Fluxus in New York. In 1969, he founded the influential, experimental ensemble The Taj Mahal Travellers, and in 1975 he would release his first solo album, Catch-Wave. “Mano-Dharma ‘74” features improvised violin drones and voice with vario…
Canti E Vedute Del Giardino Magnetico
2023 Repress American composer and multi-instrumentalist Alvin Curran has remained one of the great emblems of experimental music for the last half-century. In 1966, along with Frederic Rzewski and Richard Teitelbaum, Curran co-founded Musica Elettronica Viva, a seminal gesture in collective free improvisation. In the early '70s, his solo work would become a crucial bridge between minimalist traditions on both sides of the Atlantic. Canti E Vedute Del Giardino Magnetico, Curran's solo debut, was…
Niblock For Celli / Celli Plays Niblock
Phill Niblock’s riveting and rare work for Joseph Celli sees necessary and long-awaited reissue on the amazing Superior Viaduct, who continue to carefully and studiously unfold the history of avant-garde and experimental music before your ears.
The Mirror / Stalker
It comes as no surprise that Andrei Tarkovsky, master of Soviet cinema, turned to composer Eduard Artemiev to score his two lyrical and haunting films, The Mirror (1975) and Stalker (1979), as he had done for Solaris (also available on Superior Viaduct). Artemiev’s magnificent soundtrack to The Mirror is the natural follow-up to Solaris. Dense, slow-moving, and often disorienting mood pieces with Baroque sensibilities resonate beyond the film’s dream-like images. For Stalker—Tarkovsky’s other sc…
The Faust Tapes
Faust stand among the most influential creative forces to have emerged from Germany in the late '60s and early '70s. Along with Can, Agitation Free, Neu! and others, they rejected the Anglo-American norms of rock 'n' roll to start a back-to-basics and uniquely Teutonic revolution in sound – later dubbed by the UK press with the semi-derogatory term "krautrock." They would reach near-mythical status through a series of classic albums recorded between 1970 and 1973 at their secluded Wümme studio.A…
Pop Surgery
Following the release of lo-fi electronic masterpiece I Don't Remember Now / I Don't Want To Talk About It and his brilliant follow-up Plaster Falling, Cincinnati-based artist John Bender began assembling his third and last album, Pop Surgery, in late 1982. While all of Bender's work draws from intimate home recordings – featuring the artist alone with various keyboards, analogue sequencers and tape delays – Pop Surgery remains the one that perhaps best distills his arrant deconstruction of the …