New Arrivals
Recurrence
The latest from microsound pioneer and LINE boss Richard Chartier is a re-imagining of probably his best-known work, 2000s ‘Series’, which incidentally was the inaugural LINE release. Since 2011 Chartier has worked on revisiting elements of ‘Series’ and reworking them into ‘Recurrence’, which was intended to be able to be performed in the live environment. One of the drawbacks of ‘Series’ was that its character left it almost ‘unperformable’, so this re-visitation of the source material was out …
Oltre
The best 12k/LINE release in ages - dark, Lynchian eroded tape-loops and analogue menace. ESSENTIAL PURCHASE! (boomkat) "The Transparence dubplate, developed at O ' in Milan, Italy, works within the physical limitations of the vinyl medium, employing the object as sound source and also sound medium, to become an instrument in its own right. Using the non-linear acoustics of the gallery at O', the dubplate was recorded, and later cut to disc in Berlin, at very low volume. This ephemeral audi…
Drape
12k kicks off its 11th year with a new release that takes the label down new sonic pathways. Caught between the organic and electronic minimalism that 12k is known for and the unconventional Japanese pop musings and songwriting style of Happy, Moskitoo’s Drape is an infectously strange, bleepy, and dreamy debut release.Sanae Yamasaki (Moskitoo) hails from Sappporo, Japan in the country’s northern-most prefecture of Hokkaido. Perhaps a reaction to the cool climate of her home, her multi-instrumen…
Untitled 2011
*Limited edition of 350 copies in a vacuum packed metallic foil packaged with embossed lettering* Giuseppe Ielasi - sound artist, mastering engineer, label owner, half of Bellows - presents his most substantial solo release since 2009s 'Aix' for 12k with this untitled collection for London's Entr'acte. The eight unmarked tracks were produced in Spring/Summer 2011 and, much like his other work, would appear to be concerned with the minutiae and textured infidelities of the recording proces…
Ullakkopalo
This is the first release from Finland's Kemialliset Ystävät since 2007. Kemialliset Ystävät equals Jan Anderzén. He is one of the few Finnish musicians to have achieved renown in the international experimental circuit. In the case of Anderzén -- who also plies a trade as a visual artist -- this is not a matter of juxtaposition between experimental and mainstream, or a calculated career choice. Using music and images, he is busy creating a world that is a law unto itself, a world of exceptional …
Fenetre ovale
Karl Naegelen and the Risser/Rühl duo share a common interest in the quest for new sounds and sound illusions. Creating a confusion of sources, suggesting various acoustic spaces, evoking the sound of a sewing machine or a hard shoulder, making a rubbing sound sound like breath and making breath sound like creaking, this is the type of urge that stimulated collective research. The grand piano had to become a wind instrument and the clarinet a water instrument ; the pianist had to play per…
Outdoor Spell
Rhys Chatham has trail-blazed a course through late 20th century music, equally aplomb in post-minimalist composition as he is in punk. Not since Roebling laid his span across the East River has there been an artist who builds bridges in both how we hear music and how we can appreciate art. His latest album, Outdoor Spell, is a further document in that direction. Here has has eschewed 100 guitars, or even himself playing a single guitar, for the trumpet and voice, both electrified and dry. It is…
Gaycre (2)
Xavier Charles : clarinet, Michel Doneda : saxophone, Jean Pallandre : microphones. Following the first meeting in 1997, they went back to the same places to record again an incredible meeting of soundscape !
Saxophone Solos
Reissue of Chronoscope CPE 2002-2. Originally issued on LP 19 and a limited edition cassette. Evan Parker's first solo concert on soprano saxophone. Recorded by Martin Davidson in 1975 at the Unity Theatre in London, at that time the preferred concert venue of the Musicans' Co-operative. Further solo material for the original LP release was recorded by Jost Gebers in the FMP studio in Berlin later that year.
Beeswax Ephemera
The Preservation label presents Beeswax Ephemera from Iowa City guitarist Evan Miller. With one eye on the future and one on the past, his playing has considerable technical and abstract expanse, though retains a wonderful melodic sensibility upfront. Evan’s experimental leanings give Beeswax Ephemera an idiosyncratic quality that mark an inventive new talent in the world of artists taking guitar music into exciting new directions. These nominally earthy compositions take flight with the undenia…
Homemade Gloomy Pop
Finally available as a double CD, this collection is dedicated to Endless Nostalgia, one of the cult-band par excellence of the Italian electronic New Wave of the Eighties. Better known for the single "Me & My Alter Ego" released in 1984, this electro-pop duo from Verona, Northern Italy, produced a large number of cassette releases that have become very sought-after items nowadays. This generous and well-structured collection is a testament to the quality of the formation that was centered on Lu…
I Know When it's Time To Get The Fuck Away
From the initial sonic assault of “Apocryphal” to the final “Wrong Affection”, the five tracks guide the listener through shades of early nineties electric blues (think Palace, Songs:Ohia and fellows), sixties psichedelia flavoured from the spirit of Skip Spence. Rella's singing is rich, intense and perfumed, sometimes plunged into deep trance, like in “Are You Expired?” or “Wrong Affection” where instruments and voice rise together in a psichedelic unison building from a country-like ope…
Trouble In Paradise
Phantom Orchard, the duo of Zeena Parkins and Ikue Mori, is expanded with 5 performers representing some of the most exciting women in modern creative experimental music, releasing a surprising, riveting, and amazing album.Members of bands as diverse as DNA, Skeleton Crew, Electric Masada, Hemophiliac and Björk, Zeena and Ikue have been leading figures of the downtown scene since the early 1980s. Their fabulous duo project Phantom Orchard is expanded here with five of the most exciting and creat…
at Oto
The first meeting of two masters of improvised music. Concentrated solo pieces from each before an uncompromising duo.When Matthew Shipp was invited to London's Cafe Oto for a residency in 2010 he immediately asked to play with John Butcher, perhaps not the most obvious choice of collaborator but one that proved inspired. Although they generally work in very different areas of improvised music, both players share an intensity of focus and pugnacious individualism that heightened rather than hind…
Uncle Joe's Spirit House
A special project fully produced by William Parker for his own Centering Records imprint and dedicated to his Aunt Carrie Lee & Uncle Joe (who is pictured on the album cover) – they celebrate their 65th wedding anniversary on August 6th, 2010. William really wanted to get this done in time for this auspicious date and he did. Seven of the songs on this CD were written in December 2009 especially for this recording session which took place on January 22, 2010; Ennio's Tag and Oasis were p…
Up and down the lion-revised
“The only existing recording by this legendary 1979 trio. Alexander von Schlippenbach and Sven-Åke Johansson was a working duo, when Peter Brötzmann joined them for a trio tour in Sweden in the fall of 1979. They were all three part of the strong growth of the free improvised music and free jazz in Europe. In 1979, though, the era of revolutions was already history. They had all played in groups that made any retreat impossible; not to mention their solo works. The music of the trio 1979 could r…
Drum Dance to the Motherland
Deluxe reissue of this outsider holy grail, cosmic free jazz at the top!!There's not another record on the planet that sounds even remotely like vibraphonist khan jamal's eccentric, one-of-a-kind masterpiece, drumdance to the motherland. in its improbable fusion of free jazz expressionism, black psychedelia, & full-on dub-like production techniques, drumdance remains a bracingly powerful outsider statement thirty-four years after it was recorded live at the catacombs club in philadelphia…
Ore
Fluid forms of drones, doomy laments, & folk melodies fleshed out from a backbone of sine oscillators & violin. Behind these droning squalls is the lone figure of Marielle Jakobsons. Armed w/ her tiny army of sonic weapons, she concocts a lavaflow of melodies only to then bury them underneath a flowing river of muck. Limited to 500.
How Day Earnt Its Night
"Ben Reynolds is an English solo steel string guitarist and songwriter. In his solo instrumental works he draws upon the vast well of musical inspiration native to the British Isles as well as that found across the Atlantic and beyond. Ben's 2008 recording Two Wings was released on Portland, Oregon label Strange Attractors Audio House and focuses upon sprawling, meditative improvisations and concludes with the track 'Here Toucheth Blues' which appeared on Tompkins Square's Imaginational An…