New Arrivals
Michael Snow
Essential texts on the work of the influential artist Michael Snow: essays and interviews spanning more than four decades. Few filmmakers have had as large an impact on the recent avant-garde film scene as Canadian Michael Snow (b. 1928). His works in a range of media—film, installation, video, painting, sculpture, sound, photography, drawing, writing, and music—address the fundamental properties of his materials, the conditions of perception and experience, questions of authorship in technolog…
Experimental Sound and Radio
Art making and criticism have focused mainly on the visual media. This book, which originally appeared as a special issue of TDR/The Drama Review, explores the myriad aesthetic, cultural, and experimental possibilities of radiophony and sound art. Taking the approach that there is no single entity that constitutes "radio," but rather a multitude of radios, the essays explore various aspects of its apparatus, practice, forms, and utopias. The approaches include historical, political, popular cult…
Microsound
Below the level of the musical note lies the realm of microsound, of sound particles lasting less than one-tenth of a second. Recent technological advances allow us to probe and manipulate these pinpoints of sound, dissolving the traditional building blocks of music—notes and their intervals—into a more fluid and supple medium. The sensations of point, pulse (series of points), line (tone), and surface (texture) emerge as particle density increases. Sounds coalesce, evaporate, and mutate into ot…
Ways of Hearing
Our voices carry farther than ever before, thanks to digital media. But how are they being heard? In this book, Damon Krukowski examines how the switch from analog to digital audio is changing our perceptions of time, space, love, money, and power. In Ways of Hearing—modeled on Ways of Seeing, John Berger's influential 1972 book on visual culture—Damon Krukowski offers readers a set of tools for critical listening in the digital age. Just as Ways of Seeing began as a BBC television series, Ways …
Decomposed: The Political Ecology of Music
Music is seen as the most immaterial of the arts, and recorded music as a progress of dematerialization—an evolution from physical discs to invisible digits. In Decomposed, Kyle Devine offers another perspective. He shows that recorded music has always been a significant exploiter of both natural and human resources, and that its reliance on these resources is more problematic today than ever before. Devine uncovers the hidden history of recorded music—what recordings are made of and what happen…
Antiterra
**300 copies, CD version** Squadra Omega is an Italian-cosmic-psych-impro collective that has been active since 2009. In the past 10 years the ever-changing lineup has explored a multitude of sonic territories: their Music for the Third Eye has its roots in acid psychedelic rock but over the years their sound has been enhanced and enriched by elements of free jazz, avant-garde, Kraut, Rock in Opposition, and ethno-tribal rhythms.All these diverging elements are seamlessly merged and blended into…
Sequenze Per Raffigurazioni Mentali #5
**43 copies** Giovanni Donadini a.k.a. Ottaven is a versatile artist, illustrator, musician and fashion designer. Looking at his drawings, serigraphs, clothes, fanzines and records is easy to see how everything is extremely connected by a common thread, a strict consistency and a deep study that affect both his works as his lifestyle. This tape release on Volum E Bootleg is the 5th chapter in the Sequenze Per Raffigurazioni Mentali series, a block of compositions recorded in Sicily during summer…
Plateau
**300 copies, 2020 stock** This LP presents the first recordings of the esoteric Norwegian one-man band Taxgorkhan. Plateau is an instrumental musical travelogue that blends experimental prog, psych and electronic rock in equal measures. The music of Taxgorkhan flows from a place of pure, wide-eyed wonder, absorbing streams of expression, contemporary and ancient, synthesising new forms for the post-everything age by fusing plastic with wood, voices with waveforms, hand claps with mouse clicks.T…
Leaves in a Stream
**300 copies, 2020 stock** O. Gudmundsen Minde is proud to present the debut album from the mystical Norwegian one-man band Taxgorkhan. Leaves in a Stream is a concept record based on liquid teleportation, ancient myths and psychedelic folklore. Cosmic music for astral ears.The music of Taxgorkhan flows from a place of pure, wide-eyed wonder, absorbing streams of expression, contemporary and ancient, synthesising new forms for the post-everything age by fusing plastic with wood, voices with wave…
Enfant Terrible Vol. 1
**2020 stock** The cartoon composition Enfant Terrible was conceived as part of Norwegian cartoonist and artist Christopher Nielsen’s project where he sought to express himself in as many art forms as possible within one year, 2014 – all for the purpose of being listed in the Guinness Book of Records. Enfant Terrible would thus have covered the fifth art form; music. And here lays the proof that Enfant Terrible is a composition: four performers within the field of electronic music have interpret…
Dimpna B. Clarin and the Habagat Singers
Dimpna B. Clarin, a young soprano from the Philippines, recorded her one and only album for Saturn Research, the label founded in Chicago in 1957 by Alton Abraham and Sun Ra. Dimpna B. Clarin and The Habagat Singers was originally released on vinyl and since then has become a cult object. This obscure artefact is now available again on tape courtesy of Russian label Post-Materialization Music in a remastered version. File next to Yma Sumac and Om Kalsoum.
Variation Séculaire Géomagnétique
"Massimo Toniutti is an Italian sound designer and experimental musician. He is the brother of Giancarlo Toniutti who is best known for his dark ambient masterpiece La Mutazione which was originally released on the Broken Flag label in the UK and later reissued by Klanggalerie. Massimo started working with sound when he was a teenager, collecting and playing recordings of all kinds. In the 1980s he released four cassettes on his own label, all heavily influenced by the experimental musis scene o…
Refused
The Residents are an American art collective best known for their over 60 studio albums that were recorded over a period of more than forty years. They also created some outstanding multimedia works, mainly three CD-ROM projects and ten DVDs. Working as an anonymous collective, their identitites were kept secret until in 2017 when Hardy Fox revealed himself as their primary composer. Hardy died in October 2018, but the group continue to record and perform.The compilation album Refused was origin…
Jeff Burch
Jeff Burch's first solo full-length album is comprised of two expansive instrumental compositions anchored by beautiful old acoustic guitars and a modular synthesizer. He hoists his sounds up through the remnants of the 60's downtown drone spirit, through the fetid fruits of post-war central Europe and the scattered output of present-day suburban outsiders. The arrangements shift gracefully from floods of lush string texture to driving guitar and drum motif, from ebbs of brass and deep electric …
La Dimostrazione / Elikiller
For the first time on 7-inch vinyl, Daniele Patucchi's killer Dusty Fingers tune, "La Dimostrazione", taken from the soundtrack for the Spanish movie, "Metralleta Stein". A moody, dark-funk midtempo track, fueled with solid drum breaks and heavy basslines. A real classic for any beatmaker, this track has been sampled and compiled a dozen times. On the flip side, you will find the more dynamic “Elikiller”, another smashing jazz-funk tune with great rhythmical and menacing tension. Limited Editio…
Orgasmo Nero
Presenting for the first time on vinyl - three tracks taken from one of the most obscure and fascinating scores by Stelvio Cipriani, recorded in 1980 for Joe D’Amato’s exotic-erotic classic, Orgasmo Nero. "Seq. 1" is an incredible Afro-cosmic cinematic track, driven by superb conga work and other percussive instruments. Side B features the funkier "Seq. 3" (mid-tempo) and "Seq. 5" (downtempo) - both sexy and mysterious at the same time. Deep, obsessive atmospheres, blending together tropical c…
Ode To Quetzalcoatl
Repress in vintage-styled tip-on hard cardboard sleeve. Guerssen Records present a reissue of Dave Bixby's Ode To Quetzalcoatl, originally released in 1969. Since its discovery in the late '90s, Dave Bixby's legendary $2000 private press album from 1969 is considered by all serious record collectors as the king in the loner / downer folk genre. After being involved in '60s Michigan folk and garage-rock bands such as The Shillelaghs and Peter & The Prophets, Bixby started playing acoustic guitar …
Sonic Fermentations
**200 copies** "The moon is out and it's time for experiments in the Pacific Northwest. Enter the abode of Smegma Laboratories, dwelling of Ju Suk Reet Meate & Oblivia (The Tenses) whom are active in Los Angeles Free Music Society (LAFMS) notable collaborators with Merzbow, Wolf Eyes, John Wiese and infamous rock critic Richard Meltzer. It's late in the evening and they have invited fellow Smegmateer David Morgan along with synthesized sculptors Brenna Murphy and Birch Cooper of MSHR, and psyche…
Anne Briggs
**Limited edition gold vinyl** This eponymous 1971 debut album by Anne Briggs, largely unavailable for 48 years, is widely regarded as a pillar of any folk collection. Re-issued here as part of the Topic Treasures series – the label’s classic and notable albums expanded in deluxe format with rare images, new liner notes (by esteemed journalist, Ken Hunt) – Anne Briggs heralds a huge resurgence of interest in this most reclusive of folk doyennes.This debut album contains some of Briggs’ most nota…
Sounds of Liberation
Fronted by alto maestro Byard Lancaster, this eponymous 1972 recording from the Philadelphian spiritual jazz / funk ensemble marks another wonderful release from Dogtown Records.Formed in the early 70s, the Sounds of Liberation was a group of Philadelphia musicians made up of Byard Lancaster, Khan Jamal, Monnette Sudler, Omar Hill, Dwight James, Rashid Salim and Billy Mills. The Sounds of Liberation mixed jazz, funk, free jazz and spiritual jazz into a harmonious celebration of sound. With thei…