New Arrivals / Last 4 weeks
Mannheim HBF
So the bad news is, in a fit of pique, I asked Chat GPT (nicely) to compose a one-sheet for the new Shit and Shine double album, ‘Mannheim HBF’. The even worse news (yes, even worse than resorting to such tactics) is that the resulting biography is halfway passable and on some levels, superior to the sort of thing being published by what’s left of our weekly coupon-shoppers. But for fuck’s sake my friends, Craig Clouse did not get to where he is today today by settling for halfway passable an…
Of How Hits
In attempting to write this dispatch on the second Voice Imitator album my instinct is to pitch them as somewhat of an antidote to the current ills of what could be described as the post-Noise Rock landscape. I’m trying not to tread too far down the path of negativity and slander, so let's just say that while on paper they share basic characteristics with popular groups in the pigfuck to frat rock pipeline, Voice Imitator possess a tact and vision scantly seen in Repetition Orientated Rock. On ‘…
Ashmadai
*2025 stock* "Two adepts of the sonic arts return with a morality play in four sides. Gone are the appeals to the winged serpent, the tree of life, or other past luminaries; these days they can be seen in consort with only one: Ashmadai. It is said that Ashmadai is not to be feared. When you say to it: 'In truth thou art Ashmadai,' it will give you a wonderful ring. It will teach you geometry, arithmetic, astronomy and mechanics. When questioned, it answers truthfully. Released on two twelve inc…
Dead-Loop
*2025 stock* Tim Barnes’ latest full-length: DE∆D-LOOP (AMI 038R/W), is his first solo release since 2002’s All Acoustics. DE∆D-LOOP offers another arm in Barnes’ wide-ranging body of music and work, as well as supplying an additional thread connecting the House, pop and sound art conversations the album engages. In many ways DE∆D-LOOP is House music that takes a sideways approach to the language of dance music. As both a concept and a practice, Barnes aims to turn House on its side, reconsideri…
Ghost Ship
Four years after his rock juggernaut Puritan, Chris Brokaw delivers Ghost Ship, a landscape meditation (at sea) for vocals and electric guitars.
I set out to make an 8 song statement like 'Desert Shore' or 'Raw Power', but it became a 9 song...something else. I've described it to friends as 'Twin Peaks-ish' but that feels only part right. The songs were written on a 60's Teisco Del Rey electric guitar, set up by the Belgian luthier Flip Scipio with heavy gauge flat wound strings and an .80 gaug…
Cabanes
It has been almost seven years since the release of Alpestres, the impressive debut by Matthias Puech on Hands in the Dark. While that first experience took us on a mystical journey through fascinating fictional landscapes, 'Cabanes' lets its narrative unfold in a confined space: eight pieces each resembling small structures or makeshift shelters that, while enveloping and isolating the listener, remain open to their surroundings. These are not merely interiors; they are handcrafted spaces throu…
Intuitive Fields
Zach writes his dreams, his grand inner music emanating directly from his soul and offering it to the world, guided by his intuition. Nine abstract, ambient, and celestial tracks, evolving with his sensitivity, conducted like an intimate orchestra, revealing his landscapes and skies. Sweetzak takes us on a journey within himself and questions our emotions in this first album with complex textures, like a glimpse into what moves him.
So Einfach Ist Das
These recordings are indeed a minor sensation! It's hard to imagine that, apart from the well-known recordings in the GDR, something "different and deeper" existed in the late 1960s alongside appealing soul and jazz bands. Modern and progressive fuzzy and funky jazz rock. Really? But yes, "So einfach war das wohl / it was probably that simple" back then. The highly talented pianist Ulrich Gumpert played and composed in one of the country's most renowned ensembles, the Klaus Lenz Orchestra, since…
Rise & Bloom
*100 copies limited edition* The sixth issue in the U Jazz Me catalog is an album by the jazz super group Late Night Poems, which has already appeared on wax with the U Know Me Records logo in 2022. Imagine a jazz club straight out of New York in the 1990s. Imagine a jazz club in one of Poland's medium-sized working-class cities, which has been operating continuously for 45 years, driven and run by one tireless man. The greatest from the country and the world have played there. They stare at you…
If We Can't Dream, They Won't Sleep!!
*2025 stock* Strange connections -- Bilbao meets Japan via Berlin on a record that will put you in a constant state of WTF. ASMR rock? Post internet punk? A political manifesto in times of generalized madness? After his acclaimed 2017 destructo-punk single on Munster Records, Al Karpenter now delivers his mature, complex debut LP on the world's premier record label for adults, New York City's Ever / Never.
Al Karpenter is an elusive figure. On this record, he comes off like "Che" Guevara front…
The Forthcoming
*2025 stock* On their third album, Al Karpenter merges its singular vision with a host of collaborators. After finally becoming a band in 2022 with Marta Sainz and Enrique Zaccagnini from Santander joining Al Karpenter and Mattin, and in synchronicity with a recent CIA Debutante team-up, this group rises to the challenge of expanding its parameters. As Al Karpenter’s resident theoretician Mattin explains, “The last record was a result of the pandemic, introverted, isolated and with a blues energ…
Al Karpenter & CIA Debutante
*2025 stock* A collaboration between the Spanish Cabalists, Al Karpenter & French Rosicruanists, CIA Debutante, was not specifically foretold in the Fama Fraternitatis, but read between the lines, friend. That is where the truth lurks. The bilious Marxist splatter of the former, coursing alongside the dystopian surrealism of the latter, is a nefarious seance gambit born in the ether. Many voices are heard-fractious, cryptic, suffused, fading one into the other, the results often as hazy as the m…
Courage
Originally released in 1969, Courage marks the international debut of Milton Nascimento, one of Brazil’s most singular and influential voices. Recorded at the legendary Van Gelder Studio and produced by Creed Taylor for A&M/CTI, the album weaves together Brazilian popular music (MPB), bossa nova, and jazz, creating a lush and emotive soundscape.
Arranged by Eumir Deodato and featuring jazz great Herbie Hancock on piano, Courage is a showcase for Nascimento’s soaring, expressive vocals and poetic…
Contempo
Among one of the most sought after english dub albums, Black Jade Contempo is still somewhat of a mystery. Definitely ahead of its time, their deeper dub style was very sophisticated indeed. The material was originally recorded between 1975-76 and then collected in their self-produced debut. The vinyl first appearance was at the Notting Hill Carnival in the summer of 1976, where the band – apparently – was freely distributing it on the streets !
Sargassum aeterna
A rare vinyl edition from the prolific Serb/Croatian artist, known for her solo and collaborative releases on labels such as LINE, mappa, tsss tapes, wabi sabi, and others. Set in a divided post-apocalyptic future, the album features four expansive soundscape compositions that allow us, between acousmatic events and subtle yet dramatic electronic treatments, to travel to the last sanctuary of that not-too-distant possibility for our planet.
Different Rooms
Different Rooms is a collection of songs and musical motifs we composed, edited, and collaged in the weeks between late 2024 and early 2025. Most of the recorded material was performed during that editing process, except for live performances taken from improvisations we recorded with Jeff Parker and Josh Johnson some time in 2023. In our typical process, much of our material is collaged and combines moments of live improvisation, field recordings, and in-studio experimentation. This record, how…
Dissenting Voices with Elisabeth Flunger, Dominic Lash, Kathryn Williams
Elisabeth Flunger - bass drum Dominic Lash - double bass Kathryn Williams - bass flute "Recording the Dissenting Voices confirmed the extent of their divergence from The Future That Never Was. Music always has something to do with the sonic architecture of instruments, but it is also about the fantasy with which musicians like Dominic, Elisabeth and Kathryn choose to play." - Christopher Fox
Thelonious Monk With Sonny Rollins 1953 To 1957 (Revisited)
Though they may not have recorded together until 1953, when Rollins was 23 years old, Sonny was introduced to Monk while a senior in high school, already part of a cadre of young neighborhood jazz neophytes. Monk became a mentor to them, offering home-based instruction on the new possibilities restructuring bop harmonies and rhythms, or as Rollins later put it, “the geometry of musical time and space.” - Art Lange
Электронная Музыка АНС (ANS Electronic Music)
Available on CD (or any other format) for the first time outside USSR, Soviet composers perform their works on the legendary ANS synthesizer.