New Arrivals
SID Chip Sounds: The Music Of The Commodore 64
Compilation of music from classic Commodore 64 computer games. The 18 original pieces of music have been remastered for this release. When people talk about "Commodore 64 music," it's easy to forget they're not talking about a musical style: they're talking about a delivery mechanism. What that convenient phrase hides is the sheer amount of originality and creativity that went into creating the music for games on the Commodore 64. Included on this compilation is some of their most celebra…
The unknown knowns
Klaus Ellerhusen Holm, alto saxophone & clarinet. Tor Haugerud, drums & percussion. Kim Myhr, guitars & objects. Martin Taxt, tuba. Muringa navigates playfully in a polarized world of opposites. Between speed and tranquility, industry and flora, violence and tenderness, noise and silence, chaos and order; Muringa gives the listener the hegelian third choice. The group consists of four of the most active improvising musicians from Norway. All occupied with other SOFA-projects such as Mural…
What Are The Roots That Clutch
It was a cavernous tone that broadcast from a ventilator duct that inspired Patrick McGinley to begin collecting field recordings and working them into his slow-arc compositions. At the time when he heard that particular tone in that particular city at that particular time, he had no gear to recording device on hand. Over the next fifteen years (and counting) McGinley has eased into a peripatetic lifestyle, wandering the European countryside and forests (but never straying too far from th…
Kampanerura
Kampanerura is the name of a boy appearing in the children's story Night on the Galactic Railroad by Kenji Miyazawa (1896-1933), Japanese poet and author of children's literature. A boy with pure soul transmigrates and becomes a dissipated man around a trip to the bottom in Asia. From accompanying text by Masayoshi Urabe 'What are my legs on? What are my feet standing on? Sand? I feel something sharp and pointed! And a gentle breeze where am I? The sea? I feel it flowing! I've crossed ove…
Keynote dialogues
voice + electronics. Making music out of words, making words out of music.
Sempervirent
I spent two months in protected areas of Costa Rica making multichannel field recordings of the different forest ecosystems of Central America. Armed with a quadraphonic setup (IRT cross), a parabolic microphone, a hydrophone, and a scientist's passport, I went to nine main sites to record: the coastal evergreen forest, the tropical dry and deciduous forest, the mangroves, the wooded riverbanks and floodplains, and the forests altered in cultivated areas. The recordings were made at the S…
Praha Meditations
After the concert in Prague last year in may, we followed the proposalof friends to play some acoustic instruments spontaneously on top ofthe hill, in Troja, into a circle of stones installations.Zithers, Tubes, Bells, Rattle and Shells, Flutes..the sessions wereinspired from the special place and the spring's vibes in the wind. Therecordings that are a blueprint of the spirit of that day, were editedin studio by Alio Die, then Mathias Grassow added his electronic dronesto expand the poin…
Can't Stop It! (Australian Post-Punk 1978-82)
Originally released in 2001. A long overdue compilation of Australia's incredible post-punk history, featuring the finest selection of bands from the period 1978-82, with many previously-unreleased tracks. This is a fantastically inventive and dynamic time in Australian music history, a time when Australia stepped out of the shadow of overseas influence and asserted its own musical identity for the first time. All of the bands on Can't Stop It! released their music independently, either t…
Early Summer
10 improvised sound collages by Wade Matthews. What this music is about and how it was made. These are 10 virtual soundscapes selected from among 14 made in Madrid in late June and early July 2009, hence the name, Early Summer. They are improvised sound collages, real-time assemblages of field recordings (manipulated to greater or lesser degrees), noises, electroquotes and digital synthesis. The field recordings were made over the last two years in the San Francisco Bay area, La Mancha, a…
Los Autodisparadores
A soft immersion, leaving the surface behind,knowing that on the inside, wide horizons are waiting.In the mines of matter: laboring and exploring, searching and will-o‘-wisping, but always with compass and sextant at hand.Ample discoveries are the prize – never boastfully on display,but tended with archeological care: larger molecular aggregates, atoms, elementary particles; interacting or alone.A journey, seemingly documenting itself through close observation. Land surveying through experiencin…
Collected Dust
Marcus Fischer is a musician and multimedia artist currently based in Portland, Oregon. Field recordings, chance, and DIY instruments, coupled with acoustic instrumentation and visual art, define what has become his minimal signature. His uncanny ability to sculpt delicate beauty from the simplest of sound elements results in compositions that are both intimate and expansive.From January 2009 through January 2010, Marcus kept a blog called Dust Breeding to document the results of his goal to com…
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…
Making Words
Realized at the Lutheran Church of the Messiah in Brooklyn, New York, April of 2010.Recorded live, mixed, and mastered by Adam Diller.Featuring the invaluable contributions of: Ann Adachi (flute), Adam Diller (tenor saxophone), Tucker Dulin (trombone), Kenny Wang (viola), Andrew Lafkas (bass, composition), Margarida Garcia (electric guitar), Gill Arno (electronics), Keiko Uenishi (electronics), Barry Weisblat (electronics), Bryan Eubanks (electronics), Sean Meehan (snare drum and cymbals)
Rewound groves
Krampus used to be busy with St. Nicholas during December. But soon after St. Nicholas began to wear shiny red and white costume, he was no longer needed.He took long time to figure out why it happened, why he was abandoned. On the other hand, he could spend more time playing with old fellows in the mountains, and noticed what is most pleasant in his life.This album is released on 5th December - the day of Krampus. This edition is limited to 123 copies, wrapped in fur pocket (brunet or blond) an…
Bloom
First in the 'Neither Speak Nor Remain Silent' series of three CD EPs by this new project founded by Irish singer Clodagh Simonds. Contributors incl. Brian Eno, Roger Eno, Laura Sheeran, Lydia Sasse, Cora Venus Lunny, Toby Arnott, Carter Burwell and Andrew McKenzie of The Hafler Trio. The CD comes in a beautiful embossed cover in an edition of 2000 copies.
12k Promo Sampler 002
The second 12k sampler CD features 12 songs chronologically looking forward to early 2012 and back to the recent releases and clocks in at over 60 minutes. It offers a sneak-peak at upcoming music plus a re-cap of the past year. The CD is being sold for only $4/$6 (USA/INT'L respectively) and that includes shipping. It's an inexpensive way to familiarize yourself with the latest on 12k. 12k welcomes two new artists to the roster: The Boats (UK) bring their electro-acoustics into song-stru…
It ended up being a great day, Mr. Allende
All music by Charbel Haber, recorded mixed and mastered by fadi tabbal at tunefork studios on the 16th and 17th of January 2012. all track titles are taken from roberto bolaño's novel 'nazi literature in the americas'. artwork and design by mazen kerbaj. produced in lebanon by al maslakh
What A Beautiful Place
CD edition, lavishly packaged: In the last couple of years there's been no shortage of lost folk albums re-appearing for the world to enjoy once more, and the wonderful Numero Group label (which is fast becoming one of our most loved imprints...) has managed to find another. Hailing from the bleak northern city of Halifax, Catherine Howe was initially trained at drama school, gaining a brief stint in Doctor Who ('The Underwater Menace' for all you Whovians out there, wink wink) among othe…
White Cable, Black Wires
A stunning series of duo improvisations from two of the world's finest string players, whose shared dynamism and intensity of purpose produces fluid, powerful music that ranges from dense viscosity to swift effervescence.With all-strings improvisation there's often a danger of pseudo-classicism, of sounding vaguely like modernist chamber music, replete with refined flourishes and familiar motifs. Edwards and Lee don't just avoid this but go nowhere near it, heading off in another direction entir…
Quite a way away
To say that the last few years of Gareth Dickson’s life have been tumultuous would be an understatement. In 2007 he fell in love with a girl from South America, packed up a few essentials from his life in Scotland, and moved to the Argentinian countryside. It didn’t turn all fairy tale at that point, however. While there he was shot at, attacked by dogs, and was involved in a very close call when the passenger plane he took to a little town in the Andes was forced down after an engine cau…