New Arrivals
Have One On Me
Destined to be one of the top album of the year, finally Joanna Newsom releases her first album since late 2006's Ys, making up for lost time with a disc for 2008, one for 2009 and one for today. Featuring Ryan Francesconi and Neal Morgan from Joanna's Ys Street Band, Have One On Me is an extravagantly packaged (and extravagantly nicely-priced) collection of fantastic new Joanna Newsom songs -- her most colorful record to date.
Luck In The Valley
Like all pre-war recordings and all of Rose's releases, this album was recorded live. It was not created using overdubs but rather by recording a few 'takes' and selecting the best performance out of those. Rose stated, 'I wanted the songs to have an immediacy and spontaneity as they were being recorded. All the musicians chosen for the record know how to play the songs without overworking the material, but at the same time creating memorable accompaniments on the spot.' Several of the so…
Maidenstone E.P.
"A previous member of the band UN, Tara Burke (aka Fursaxa) is now one of the epicenters and key collaborators of the North American free-folk movement, along with such luminaries as Jack Rose, Charalambides, Ben Chasny and the Jewelled Antler Collective. With her hypnotic, echoey church bell chanting, Burke possesses a power-filled vocal sound that harkens back not only to those other polar queens of disaffected freakout psychedelia Nico and Barbara Manning, but she is also akin to and i…
Empty The Sun
BOOK + CD: A novel by Joseph Mattson featuring music by SIX ORGANS OF ADMITTANCE. Available in First Trade Paperback Edition with CD soundtrack and as a limited edition vinyl LP soundtrack with Large Format Book. “Here I was, doing ninety on the Santa Monica Freeway with a quart of whiskey shoved into my crotch and my dead neighbor in the trunk. It had come time to leave Los Angeles.” Thus begins the pre-apocalyptic, cross-country race with death to bury the murdered past in Joseph Mattson’s Emp…
Sarod recital / live in Peshawar
Three beautiful extended ragas recorded last year in Peshawar: "Asad Qizilbash is the only Sarod player in Pakistan since 1992, keeping this traditional instrument and its music alive. Asad was born in 1963 to the famous violinist K.H. Qizilbash, who was responsible for closing the gap between western and eastern classical music. After attending a concert performed by his future Master, Ustad Amjad Ali Khan, Asad decided to devote himself to the instrument. Today, Asad Qizilbash has the honour t…
The Glass Bead Game
James Blackshaw once made Michael Gira cry. Not by sucker-punching the poor guy. It was something much simpler: Blackshaw reduced the former Swan frontman — a menacing presence even as he eclipses AARP eligibility — to tears through nothing but a finger-picked acoustic and minimal, melancholic chords. It's easy to understand why. As Gira wrote in a press release celebrating Blackshaw's signing to his Young God imprint, the widely-acclaimed 12-string maestro writes "absolutely beautiful and spell…
Captain Wedderburn's Courtship / The Dowie Dens O Yarrow
A split single to be listened and heard (and more importantly, bought) with the compilation Whar the Pig Gaed on the Spree. Tradition-minded singers Alasdair Roberts, Karine Polwart, and Drew Wright do the honors. A-side: "Captain Wedderburn's Courtship" performed by Alasdair Roberts and Karine Polwart B-side: "The Dowie Dens o Yarrow" performed by Drew Wright
Alienacustica
'Alienacustica' is a superb collection of works by Maurizio and Roberto Opalio (My Cat Is An Alien) as you have never heard before. Forget all MCIAA's noise records... this is a totally different affair: starting from January 2006 they have released 3 unusual, completely acoustic works, all in limited and sold-out editions: a soloist split lp, a private art edition cd-r, and an out-of-print cd. The different approach to these works shows another side of the Opalio brothers' musical universe: all…
Beautiful Monolith Two
It seems as Campbell Kneale (within his Love Will Destroy The World project) aims to discover any darkest and most dangerous corners of the modern experimental music. As an experienced and dedicated hunter, he doesn't walk the empty tracks, rather he's interested much more in rich bushes and impassable thickets. The A side's track is “Glittery Skin”, it shows Merzbow-like pulsating electronic noises, but the main energy-giver is obscure and doomy heavy guitar riff. Sick, anarchic, trancesending …
Infant
last copies, Toy-psychedelia, what a precocious three-year-old might come up with if (s)he had a penchant for the Canterbury scene. Fun to listen to, not sure about the ultimate value. Beautiful cloth cover
Refuse This Gift
The third album Refuse This Gift from Bear Claw is one of two records that ended up being part of a double whammy of releases from Sickroom Records just recently for me. Paired up, at least in my mind, with the excellent Conformists record (which you can find a couple posts below) Bear Claw gives a bit more of a traditional spin on the Chicago math/noise-rock sound compared to their label mates. With their third album Refuse This Gift the band hasn’t deviated all that much from their pr…
Anal Aura Gram(ophone)
An edition of 300 copies on 180 gram blue vinyl and packaged in a custom made book bound sleeve. Available late August 2009 (delayed from original release date due to nefarious pressing plant.) 'Anal Aura Gram' is a vinyl version of the long deleted CDR that came in limited quantities with the 2003 album 'Aural Anagram' and also features a bonus 7' disc of two remixes by Steven Severin (Siouxsie & The Banshees, The Glove). How many lives would be saved if every one had an Anal Aura Gram? Andrew …
Politico/Zytol Automation
De Stijl's excavation of The Parasites Of The Western World turns up the lead single for their second album in the form of an exact reissue. Originally released circa 1980-81, 'Politico' opened the B-side to Substrata with a rippin' new wave roller full of glam stomp, proggy arrangement and punky attitude. The synth-fueled instrumental B-side was exclusive to the single, and as tradition dictates, far more interesting, featuring Terry Censky and Patrick Burke in an ebullient symphony of s…
Untitled (1959)
Track titles are from paintings by Mark Rothko. Ariel Shibolet (soprano saxophone), Aurora Josephson (voice), Jen Baker (trombone), Scott R. Looney (piano), Damon Smith (double bass). Recorded by Scott R. Looney, 8 January, 2006 at 1510 Studios, Oakland, CA, USA. Mixed by Scott R. Looney. Cover: five linocuts by Aurora Josephson.
Heartbreaker / Look At The People
Initially conceived in Louisville in 1978 from the ashes of two local punk bands by Tony Pinotti, Bruce Witsiepe (coming from No Fun) and Rik and Dave Letendre (coming from I-Holes), the band Circle X moved to New York soon after. They encountered there a young german painter, Ralph Neun, linked to the art school of Darmstadt. Ralph Neun was living in NYC for about a year, and decided to record a song evoking the city: Rolling Stones' 'Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker)'. Ralph Neun booked…
Water days
The book and audio CD documents an exchange of pictures, texts, sounds and voices between multimedia artist Leah Singer and Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo. WATER DAYS began as two texts each inspired by the contrast between wanderlust and the desire for home and in this volume attempts to create a filmic sequence of photographs to augment and accompany the recording. The new sound piece WATER DAYS, a radio piece for Atelier de Création Radiophonique de France Culture (ACR) is a mix of sound recording…
For Pau Torres
Catalan musician Ferran Fages, known for his guitar work as much as his work with turntables and electronics, delivers here a striking album of evocative, nocturnal electric guitar explorations. Bracketed by two intricate pieces of feedback, the centerpiece of this work maps out a carefully constructed arc of a story, bringing this album closer to that often misunderstood soundtrack-for-a-movie-yet-to-be-filmed genre. Ferran Fages: electric guitar and walkie-talkie. Composed, recorded and mixed …
Acoustic solo percussion-vol.3
Following his two previous 7“s with ‘acoustic solo percussion’ (see Vital Weekly 687 and 706), here is the third volume. Like before it’s hard to believe its percussion music. But this time we get a detailed notes on the proceedings: side E has ‘two cymbals bowed together with one cello bow’ and side F has ‘a snare drum rubbed with a ring of styropor and two cymbals bowed together with a cello bow’ (and made me wonder how many hands Wolfarth has?). Oh, did I mention ‘no overdubs, electronics and…
The Crown Center
West coast ghost squad stalk back into the deadlights w/ a fresh vinyl single. Pure nightprowler music: quaking bass, grime-jazz keys, dusty drums, witch choirs floating through the smog & into sleeping homes w/ the power lines cut. The sound of crime to come. The dreamer's dream turned dark. Ltd to 345
Tapes 1977-1983
This is the limited to 99 copies friends edition in white vinyl of which 66 copies come is special white leather-taped box-set