New Arrivals
Tourbillon D'Obscurité
Philippe Petit is interested in soundtracks; even if he creates original music he'd rather be introduced as a "musical travel agent" than a composer. Petit uses a Cymbalum, an Electric Psalterion, computer and synths to build up electronic layers, process acoustic and field recordings.
To second the machines he likes to move various glasses,
or percussive objects, and take advantage of vinyl material to fondle released sounds. A journalist for various magazines and radio as well as a musical ac…
Fame
This new CD, Fame, the first all sound poetry release on Pogus, consists of 20 new polypoems produced by noted Italian sound poet, scholar, and sound poetry archivist Enzo Minarelli between 2008 and 2010. Since the early 1970s, Enzo Minarelli has been developing his multiple activities, starting from the written word, which will become related to orality, visuality, performance and television. He has been active in the field of linear and visual poetry, creating several one-man shows and a…
Centralia
Mountains’ music is defined by slow builds, and subtle transformations, textures and melodic lines that evolve in a variety of ways to create grand soundscapes and acutely detailed compositions. For Centralia, the duo of Koen Holtkamp and Brendon Anderegg wrote and recorded in a way that mirrors the pace of their music. While the current trend in experimental music is towards hyper-prolificity, Mountains have taken their time on Centralia, resulting in an album that is as precise as it is boundl…
Stone Circle
RESTOCKED! 10/10 on Foxy Digitalis, writing "best psych album of the year! Maybe even best psych album ever?! “Stone Circle” deserves much more than a measly ten stars!”. Wood-land have released a few bits and bobs on the Install label but i'm totally unfamiliar with their work. 'Stone circle' is the duo's first full length release, limited to a super small run of 100 copies. On first listen i reckon it's total winner. Twenty tracks of brooding lo-fi instrumentation that sounds like it was recor…
Resume the Cosmos
"Resume the Cosmos" finds the unclassifiable Virginian band Rake performing some of their most diverting and accessible work to date. The five nameless tracks that make up the disc were culled from many hours of studio improvisation, not only on a range of atmospheric instrumentation, but also with studio space and "silence" itself. The elusive membership of Rake play out like reconstructed indie rock fans with fistfuls of Sun Ra/Coltrane/70s Miles/Art Ensemble of Chicago/Henry Cow scattered thr…
Peradam
In Rene Daumal's Mount Analogue, a peradam is described as a clear and extremely hard stone, a true crystal. It is so transparent that it is nearly impossible to see. To discover a peradam was always the result of an inner act. At said moment in time, the stone's brilliance might catch the eye of one who seeks the truth. Most peradams were found on the rough and dangerous trails up the mountain. Peradam is the result of Marcia Bassett (Zaimph, Hototogisu) and Jenny Grf (Harrius, Metalux) collabo…
C+-
The Phonos ek Mechanes trio was founded in 2007 by three composers and electro-acoustic performers from Wroc aw: Cezary Duchnowski, Pawe Hendrich and S awomir Kupczak. The name of the group comes from Greek and means 'the sound of the machine' which reflects specific methods of artistic creation applied by the three musicians. They play typical instruments such as the piano, electric guitar or electric violin, often prepared and tuned for microtonal music. Sounds that are created this way do not…
Iconicities
3 amazing pieces for Percussion and Live Electronics by Chris Brown’s (b. 1953) whose music has evolved within the intersections of many different traditions and styles. Following early training as a classical pianist, he was influenced by studies of Indonesian, Indian, Afro-American, and Cuban musics, and then took off on branches provided by the American Experimentalists in inventing and building a personal electronic instrumentation. Collaboration and improvisation have been primary in …
Dead Space
Blip is a duo collaboration between Jim Denley and Mike Majkowski: two of Australia's most prominent improvising musicians. They began playing together in 2002, as members of The Splinter Orchestra, and formed Blip in 2009. They have been developing their own approach to the woodwinds/strings duo arrangement, deconstructing and reconstructing this format. Blip music focuses on duration, the subtleties of sound, the pitch within timbre and texture, as well as pulse. Wi
Troubled, Shaken Etc
Another album of unclassifiable experimental songs from British band the Sian Alice Group, who blend elements of avant-rock, folk and dark, cinematic tones for a uniquely atmospheric, inter-disciplinary sound. A Stereolab-like mix of pop modernism and Terry Riley minimalism gets the album started ('Love That Moves The Sun'), before all momentum is dismantled in favour of fluid ambience on 'Airlock'. From here on the band continue to genre-hop before stumbling upon a rich vein of balladry on trac…
s3d (Ear & Eye)
s3d presents a world of fresh sounds from invented and unconventional instruments with names as curious and evocative as the sounds they produce: mothics, shimsaw, kyurukyuttsu, gloopdrum, corrugahorn, sprong, sundrum and many more. An international collaboration. Twelve experimental instrument builders/improvisors in an inspirational world-first.
Exécution des hautes œuvres
Roro Perrot is acoustic improvised songs by Romain Perrot, aka French master of Harsh Noise Wall Vomir. CD released by French label Premier Sang
Homunculus
Debut disc from the new collaborative project between Nathan Bowles (Black Twig Pickers/Spiral Joy Band) and Lisa Cameron (Venison Whirled). A real odd one this, lots of rattling and scraping of percussive objects creating 3 tracks of abstract improvised surreal sonic explorations. The sound is matched by what I can only describe as the weirdest sleeves I have every had the joy of releasing (and we've had some weird ones), but this one is far out, the guy at my local print shop looked baffled wh…
Ceremonies to breathe upon
Two contrabass players here, Andrew Lafkas, of whom I not really heard I think and Michael T. Bullock, of whom I did hear before, and know as someone who likes his improvised playing to be minimal - to say the least. I think Bullock at times also uses electronics, but I am not if he uses any of that here. Its not mentioned on the cover, nor the fact that this is perhaps a live concert. I do however think this is a live recording, however one with no audience, but a direct-to-track recording of t…
Unknown skies
...Every trio without a piano, or without a drums, or as in this case without a double bass, gains in incline what it loses in “balance”. It only takes a little sometimes. Everyone plays at ease across. Everyone can split themselves. There are no more solos as solos but phases, circles of influence and predominance which do not last. The duos bind and unbind more clearly, the contrasts stand out better. The theme is no longer material to develop but, as in Unknown Skies, a lyrical and volatile s…
Okkupation
Thomas Rehnert lives and works in Berlin. He was deeply influenced by the European free jazz of the 1970s, and in West Berlin in the 1980s he played percussion in various punk bands. In the world of punk and experimental music of these years, he began to occupy himself with electro-acoustic music, machine music and automata. He builds sound machines from analogue modular synthesizer systems that are voltage- controlled and steer themselves.His formative principle of organization is variation by …
Quintet
Things get dislocated, gather themselves, spread across areas of varying intensities. More intimate or more complex song. closer to the sacred, left untouched by mediation, even slightly incomprehensible, though mostlyambivalent and reality-piercing. At times, the music seems to lead us to a meaning that is deeper than the textual level. or is it the depth of another possible song? That's when the music takes us to areas that seem perpetually urging, more than their simple addition of voi…
Mind Ctrl: Psychic
A new label (The Fader) brings a deluxification of 2009's Psychic Chasms, which now also contains the bonus album Mind Ctrl: Psychic Chasms Possessed, featuring nine exclusive remixes and cover versions by Toro y Moi, Body Language, Javelin, Bibio, Yacht, Darby Cicci of The Antlers, Twin Shadow, Dntel, and Anoraak!An elusive new project from composer Alan Palomo, Neon Indian delivers equal parts synthetic nostalgia, dream-pop lullabies, and grinding guitar noise to create something eerier t…
Drones
In the beginning there was the piano. As soon as he had mastered the basics, Jean-Philippe Goude discovered the spell of melancholy while working on a little musical piece: an etude ringing out in the style of a somber hymn. Not the dead meat smells of somberness that, according to Picabia, serious people emit, but the earthen gravity of an abyss dug by life itself. Everything is the result of this bedazzlement. At 11 years old, Jean-Philippe Goude closed his eyes. When his eyelids finall…
Amber Sea
Duo of Agnes Szelag & Marielle Jakobsons (aka DARWINSBITCH). They create electroacoustic songs on many instruments such as violin, cello, voice, bass, gezhong, piano, & accordian. Their scores are often conceptually or process-driven, resulting in their unique style of electroacoustic music, reminiscent of Scandinavian free folk, lullabies, dramatic film scores, & electronic improvised music