New Arrivals
What The Truth Leaves Out
*In process of stocking. Limited edition of 100 copies.* "Rootless (or, more properly, rootless) is a solo project that's been going for better than five years now, helmed by Brooklyn's Jeremy Hurewitz. Two types of sounds are created under this banner -- low key electronics is one, and fingerpicked acoustic guitar is the other. What The Truth Leaves Out focuses on the latter. The shared thread between these styles is a highly personal and intimate feel. When listening to rootless, you often get…
Wamono A To Z Vol. III (Japanese Light Mellow Funk, Disco & Boogie 1978-1988)
Tip! Active as a professional DJ in Japan since the late eighties, DJ Yoshizawa Dynamite is also a renowned remixer, compiler and producer. An avid record collector and an expert of the Wamono style, Yoshizawa published the Wamono A to Z records guide book in 2015 which instantly sold-out. The book unveiled a myriad of beautiful and rare records from a highly prolific, but still then unknown, Japanese groove scene. After many years working as a record buyer for several stores, DJ Chintam open…
Some Moments 1994 - 2022
Kaplan's second release represents a collection of his versatile work through last three decades. Leaving the previous concept of short abstract vignettes, he moves into more "structured" approach, more complex explorations of loop asthetics, cut-up techniques but also pieces for improvised ensembles.
Axis Mundi
*Limited edition of 200 copies.* "According to the anthropology of religions, the axis mundi is a bridge between three dimensions: Earth, Heaven and Abyss. It is an element of verticality and transcendence as well as of fall. Often identified with towers or altars, it indicates the axis of the cosmos, which relates the center of man, his deep soul, with what exists Outside and Beyond. The axis mundi embodies its impulse towards eternity, not only as an aspiration to a shining after life but also…
Atrabile
*In process of stocking. Limited edition of 150 copies.* Black bile, in ancient Greek medicine, is one of the four humors that make up the human body and affect its existence. Specifically, black bile is the mood responsible for melancholy, anxiety and depression. “Atrabile” is an album about depression in its different stages, from despair (“Koma”) to suffocation (“Atlas”), via total discouragement (“Achlýs”), anxiogenic obsession (“Knōsós”) and deviant perception of time (“Kairos”). The work i…
Are You Ready?
First physical solo release from legendary vocal improvisor, dancer, and performer Maggie Nicols, and the follow up to Creative Contradiction (Takuroku 2020).
While she might be best known as an improviser (most notably in Spontaneous Music Ensemble, the Feminist Improvising Group and more recently with the likes of Les Diaboliques, Maggie Nicols’ talents stretch into song, dance, poetry, performance and composition. When Cafe OTO was shut over lockdown we invited her to follow up the wonderful …
Feedback Of N.M.S.
**Limited Edition of 299 copies. Fully remastered** Incapacitants are the best noise band to ever come out of Japan; the group was formed in 1981 in Osaka, as the solo project of Toshiji Mikawa, a member of the amazing noise group Hijokaidan. Mikawa later moved to Tokyo, where he joined with Fumio Kosakai (also an occasional member of Hijokaidan, as well as a former member of C.C.C.C.) to make Incapacitants a duo and they released its first album Feedback Of N.M.S. on Alchemy Records CD in 1991…
Wesen
*In process of stocking. Limited edition of 200 copies.* Imagined (?) dreams of being chased, false awakenings, etc. analyzed through a lens of the gestaltpsychologic understanding. Perceptions containing qualities that do not result from the arrangement of simple sensory qualities. An example of Gestalt-qualität, as Christian von Ehrenfels writes, is a melody that may consist of individual tones, but is much more than just the sum of these tones. Individual tones could combine to form completel…
The Arabic Room
* 300 copies * A critical meditation on variations of Orientalism practiced by Arabs themselves, as well as those who were born and raised within the diaspora. It originally began as a documentation of extended drum techniques, but eventually morphed into a project of more ambitious scope. Having an open timeframe, Julius Masri gave himself reasons to include all the instruments he obsessively picked up and learned over the years. The work accumulated intentions and guiding principles, and it be…
From Dusk Till Dawn
Tip! The new record by The London Sound Survey, From Dusk Till Dawn, is a dramatic journey, sonically celebrating the cyclical continuity of materiality’s impermanence. From the start, the listener is carried away, entranced and ferried on sound waves along the coastal habitats of Lakenheath Fen, captured as perpetually playing a graceful dance of life and death.
Released posthumously on Persistence of Sound, this is possibly the last album by Ian Rawes, the founder, artist and archivist of The …
Dick And Stewart Original Soundtrack
*2022 stock. a single sided 12' inch LP. UV printing on the reverse side.* Dick and Stewart is a series of short animations set in either Britain’s dismal past or the Britain that’s soon to come. It's hard to tell nowadays, isn't it? Either way, just imagine what it would be like if childrens’ TV programmes were written by George Orwell or Franz Kafka. Or the government itself. The stories follow the adventures of the eponymous Dick and an eyeball, which is all that’s left of his best friend, St…
Karaoke (7")
If you ever witnessed an Alvarius B. show you are probably aware that there are a few things only in underground music matching this level. If you haven't, don't miss him when he's coming close next. Karaoke shows one of the many characters you could explore during his shows. As his brother Richard, the other keyholder of Sun City Girls legacy, Alan Bishop played a lot of shows not only under the Alvarius B. moniker on various Unrock stages through the years. "Solo Nostalgia" (E. Morricone) and …
I'm Here
*Limited edition of 500 copies* Drummer and composer Edward Vesala, the most internationally renowned jazz musician from Finland, was very keen on percussion instruments. Oddly enough, this broad and enduring interest is hardly evident on his albums.Whether playing on his own albums or contributing to other musicians’ work, Vesala played a standard drum kit most of the time. He hardly used external percussionists on his own albums either. And most of all: his music was almost never percussive, a…
Diversity
*In process of stocking.* The grand old man of Finnish Jazz, Eero Koivistoinen, has not kept still in his old age. Far from it, he's played with rappers from the younger generation, Argentinian tango singers, you name it. The Eero Koivistoinen Quartet, onto its 10th year in existence, is his outlet for what he knows by heart like no one else - cool quartet jazz in which Eero is aided by younger luminaries from the scene. Alexi Tuomarila is on the grand piano, Jori Huhtala on bass and Jussi Lehto…
Hadd Mondjam El
Official remastered reissue of the raunchy Hungarian psych rock cult hit from 1973. Zalatnay Sarolta’s fourth album “Hadd Mondjam El’' has been a slavishly sought-after relic by ostrock purveyors and sample hunters since the 90s. Throughout her long career she’s been a reality TV star and a schlager hit singer loved nationwide. Her early albums, however, painted a different picture. “Hadd Mondjam El” was a commercial flop but its daring contents have stood the test of time, the album becoming a …
Sotto E 'Ncoppa
Tip! Despite the title of the album, it is the Tullio De Piscopo's third work, recorded in 1976. Comprising nine tracks in total across its two sides, “Vol. 2” falls somewhere between fusion and prog, straddling darker, brooding temperaments with joyous, funky lines. Predictably, as is nearly the case with music of this sort, the playing and artistry is top-notch, the band locked together with remarkable precision, but the journey that “Vol. 2” takes is far from expected. Interspersed throughout…
Sight Drawings
*Limited edition of 150 copies.* Culled from field recordings, sampled orchestral noises, and voice recorders, Sight Drawings explores the spatial impressions of sound within a delicate acousmatic language; producing expressionistic collages that translate into wide-screen cinematic terrain. Across the seven pieces, Mohanna cuts a tapestry of kinetic digital noise, deconstructed guitar, and sweeping brutalist strings, picking off from previous work and engaging the listener with a materiality of…
Gift (7")
* 200 copies. 7" vinyl record with poly, two-sided jacket and dust sleeve * Tetuzi Akiyama plays and explores the guitar with both a primitive-instinctual and technically advanced playing style. Ranging from acoustic minimalist reductionism to maximal full throttled amplication, he seeks to energize, electrify, and connect his own body into his playing and performance. His solo albums cover the realms of Americana-fingerpicking, acoustic slide guitar atonalism, noise, drone, and hi-amp’d infi…
Ago
*300 copies limited release. In process of stocking* An original and particular approach to rhythmic electronics, with an incredible sound, like in all of Colin Potter's works. Six hypnotic tracks from Colin's archive of rarities, for the first time on vinyl, perfect to play really loud. These six pieces were recorded between the late 80s & mid-90s at IC Studio, which was then located in Tollerton, North Yorkshire. “I wanted to make some tracks which were much more rhythmic. By then the studio w…
Beyond the dark zone
*Limited edition of 300 copies. In process of stocking* "Cristiano Bocci’s Beyond the Dark Zones does just what its title promises. It takes us beyond the heavy sounds of dark ambience—not only beyond them, but through them. Bocci’s poetics is rooted in the electronic soil of texture-based music; the plant that grows from it is a multi-faceted, many-branched thing. First, the electronics. Bocci is a skilled creator of audio software; many of the programs he uses to generate and manipulate sound …