New Arrivals
Ghost with chains
Long-running Twin Cities horsepower trio Daughters Of The Sun have been subtly chugging out their faded-tattoo spirit-in-the-sky psych exhaust for at least half a decade now but we didn’t catch the drift till March ’09, when we got to witness a packed post-midnight smoke-soaked Minneapolis loft set and waved our lighter with the masses. Ghost With Chains is their third official full-length (not including some EPs and a killer split) and it’s as beautifully moon-burnt and highway-swept as anythin…
Henzai
Tokyo-based guitarist/singer Hisato Higuchi presents his fourth full-length and first LP release. Henzai is Higuchi at his most bare. Each song appears like a spectral poem -- sewn together with hushed electricity and whispers. This recording is wholly intimate, recorded in seclusion, and washes over the listener like a hazy, day-break dream. Higuchi splits these 12 torch-songs between slow-motion improvisations and the composed, yet each is sung with a mix of beautiful wordless/Japanese languag…
Shining Skull Breath
This ultra limited, and long out of print cd-r from 2007, finally available again, now as a super swank (and still quite limited) lp...Another gorgeous sonic transmission from right here in the Bay Area, from AQ fave Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, the man behind Tarentel, and the Root Strata label. Those familiar with Cantu-Ledesma's music know that he usually speakers in hushed whispers, breathy and breathless, soft sonic shimmers allowed to drift like billowy clouds into your ears. But here, C-L …
Foetus
An internationally known artist, Franco Battiato has been everything in his long career, from beat singer to avantgarde performer, producer, contemporary music composer.His beginnings lay in the mid 60's, with many singles released with no particular success, the first two under his real name of Francesco. He had left the native Sicily (he was born in Jonia, near Catania in 1945) moving to Milan around 1965.Fetus, housed in a outrageous cover (reproducing a foetus) was definitely a prog al…
Split
Inspired split LP that pairs feral European art soundists Kommissar Hjuler and Mama Baer with the avant garage surrealism of LAFMS stalwarts Smegma. Numbered edition of 177 copies with colour paste-on sleeves. The Smegma side bundles an eerie track from 1975 with two pieces from 2008/2009 that use loops, electronics and waves of extended muzzy tone to confuse time lines completely. The Kommissar side is less about outlaw sound poetry and more plugged into their destructo rock style as documented…
Ectoplasma
Software Recording Co. presents Tropa Macaca's fourth release, Ectoplasm. The ambient-noise duo of André Abel and Joana da Conceição have been going strong from their Portugal home base since 2005, while lunging out into the world with releases via Qbico and Ruby Red. The following to 2009's Sensação do Princípio on Stiltbreeze, Ectoplasm finds Tropa Macaca creating a quantic fantasy sound not unlike a cybernetically enhanced Taj Mahal Travellers interpreting a lost chapter of One Hundred…
Triangles
There's something almost religious about this Charlatan (Brad Rose) LP, its narrative arc swinging from light to dark and back again. From the opening chords of "Lime Beauty," we're awash in polarized-lens glinting twilight, fluorescent skies over the water. "Trace Blue Outlines" is trance-like and reflective, with long, arpeggiated figures chasing each other skyward in a fugue. Darkness creeps in around the edges of "Vodka Rocks," with almost post-rock moodiness bringing the side to a cl…
White Summer of Love Dreamer
Brand new LP from Kawabata Makoto, his second for Blackest Rainbow following on nicely from where 2008's 'Rainbow Of Love' left off. White Summer of Love Dreamer continues to develop Kawabata's experimentation into psychedelic drone music using a variety of instruments. Across the two tracks on this LP, Kawabata seamlessly uses acoustic guitar, electric guitar, bouzouki, sarangi, tambura, organ, hurdy-gurdy, electronics, field recording, and his voice to create a stunning soundscape of hazy summ…
Hallway Of Mirrors
VHF is releasing a bunch of solo guitar dudes over the next few weeks. Here's one of 'em! It's an album from New York's Alexander Turnquist called Hallway of Mirrors. It says that above so it's kinda pointless me saying that. Having said that the New York thing was a new bit of info so it's not all filler! I've not heard this chap before but I was rather taken with him on first listen. It's not a million miles away from the likes of James Blackshaw.... ie extreme 12 string fingerpluckery which i…
Caesarean
As Concern, Gordon Ashworth has explored drone music through an inspection of the textural components of acoustic instruments and recording processes. On Cæsarean the palette presented is a singularly precise one. Using simple sources (piano, clarinet, banjo, shrutti box, and acoustic guitar), tape processing (1/4” and cassette), and reverberation, Ashworth crafts delicate tape music through transforming repetitions and obscured fidelity. The emotional and physical presence of Cæsarean is over…
Hexplore Superfluidity
Stargate is something in between pre-sleep Tetris Effect and Trance music in slowmotion: gated soft synth arpeggios smoothly modulate towards brutal supersawed patterns, disintegrating into ecstatic vocals. You are opening the doors of an Ibizia club at 5 am, the foam is all around and your eyes start twisting, your brain is gently stretched & pitched down. You are locked into the longest build-up ever. Unique, truly inspired, 100% uplifting music from the "Dawn of the Cryonics": watching …
Klavierwellen
Amazing release by the video & sound-artist from Brazil Marcellvs L., a four-channel sound piece titled "Klavierwellen" or Piano Waves (2011). The piano waves we hear are literally just that: while on a residency, the artist upturned a piano on a boat traveling around the canals, on which two contact microphones were attached to the soundboard and two micro omnidirectional placed between the soundboard and strings. The movement of the boat through water creates a kind of roving ambient experienc…
Live in Paris 4.IX.86
Reissue of a classic tape from 1986. Bruno Cossano released 4 tapes thoughtout the 80s and appeared on various compilations such as the 'Hate's our belief' tape ion Aquilifer Sodality. Now for the firs time this Italian power electronics master can be heard on vinyl with some of his most powerfull and intense stuff.
Smoke Song
Third in a trio of limited edition new LP’s from the ever mysterious Vibracathedral crew, returning from another relatively quiet period with an uncompromising set of outre’ jams. Slightly reorganized around a lineup of stalwarts Mick Flower and Adam Davenport with frequent collaborators John Godbert (Total) and John Moloney (Sunburned Hand of the Man), the band here stretches way, way out over these six sides, taking in several different styles while maintaining “that” sound all the way through…
This is no fun acid 02
'In the beginning there was Roland's founder Ikutaro Kakehashi and an arsenal of computer controlled analog jock boxes designed specifically to outmode the trad rock (read: human) rhythm section... the circuitry was so tightly wound however, so rooted in synthesis that it failed to meet its promise. It wasn't until the mid-80s that the TB-TR system took novel form as acid house; a simple but novel attitude shift that saw an embrace of extra-terrestrial machine funk aesthetics converging with the…
The Live in Lisbon
What happens when two stars collide? An interstellar collaboration out of this galaxy! Here in this new fantastic LP from Virginia Genta (of Jooklo fame) and Chris Corsano (arguably considered 'the last drummer on earth'), both musicians put blood, sweat, and lots of muscle into three new wildly charged cuts!!!! The album begins at sunset on a terrace in Lisbon (Summer 2008) with ferocious sax and drums escalating as the sun sets with Chris' incredible drum solo leaving everyone in a trance, whi…
Le Couperet: Music For The Crimes Of Dr. Petiot
Near-mythical compilation originally released on Broken Flag as a cassette in 1983. Around this time there were compilations coming out all over the place, usually featuring at least one of Whitehouse, Ramleh, The New Blockaders or Sutcliffe Jugend along with a bunch of other obscure noise bands. This one's been completely unattainable and I've never even seen a copy come up for sale anywhere so having a viyl reissue is great! Featured on here are Ramleh, TNB and Vortex Campaign, along with Sir …
Spirits
After a few years spent living in Sweden and touring with Cecil Taylor's Jazz Unit, Ayler moved to NYC to begin imposing his revolutionary style of jazz on the world through a number of groundbreaking records. Spirits, recorded at Atlantic Studios in New York City on 24 February 1964, was his first effort. Recorded a few months prior to his landmark album for ESP-Disk, Spiritual Unity (but only released in Europe on Denmark's Debut Records), for the occasion Ayler recruited Norman Howard …
New Sky Dragon
Top flight three man cosmic research team further investigations on galactic flux and refraction with two transmissions of synesthetic mind-fold. Lift off with skyward string stasis cutting through buffeted drum-clouds and synthesiser atmosphere, cosmic forever vision peaks at warp-speed rocket drone, anti-gravity percussion accents and star scraping rainbow universes. Saturating feedback zones spread webs of dimension amidst asteroid belt orbits, where two-way trips initiate zero g shimm…
Day before one
Frode Gjerstad (alto sax, bass clarinet) and Paal Nilssen-Love (drums) recorded 2000 by Frode. Cover art by Terry Nilssen-Love. 'Two men sitting on a balcony, old friends, right before dawn. Maybe sipping some nice cups of tea, maybe even something stronger. Talking about anything, things shared, opinions, the way of the world. From time to time the conversation heats up a bit, touches things that are not seen completely eye to eye, then (eventually, always) understanding, friendship, trust take…