New Arrivals
Complete Spiral
Two of the world's most distinguished electronic musicians have drawn upon their shared passion for the sensuality and groove of late '80s / early '90s NYC House to hatch a genuine anthem for unsuspecting and open minds. DJ Sprinkles, aka Terre Thaemlitz, is a now Tokyo-based producer who, among so much other stuff, released the hugely loved, genre-defining "Midtown 120 Blues" album back in 2009. Mark Fell is the South Yorkshire-based sonic genius known for groundbreaking work as half of…
The Skipper at Home
Jazz-man Henry Franklin, widely respected for his service to the finest jazz players, brought that ineffable quality called soulfulness into play when he made his first record for producer George Porter at Black Jazz, The Skipper. Not unexpectedly, his follow-up affair titled The Skipper at Home teems with the same jaunty uplift. In sync with Franklin's musical spirit on the second recording are returnees Charles Owens on saxophone, Oscar Brashear on trumpet and Kenny Climax on guitar along wi…
Low Life / Last Exit
Two key 80s moments from Peter Brotzmann – split together here on a heavy LP! First up is material from the album Low Life – hard-handed work from the duo of Peter Brotzmann on reeds and Bill Laswell on bass – a set that's kind of a side project of the Last Exit quartet, and one that comes across with a similar sense of power! Laswell's handling a fair bit of basses here, often with a bit of processing – thanks partly to producer Martin Bisi – and there's a dark, electric undercurrent to the who…
Homeless cats
The Swedish psychedelic trance-rock pioneers new album - Homeless Cats. Eleven new boundless tracks with organic music for open minds. A 40-year anniversary is actually rather on the small. Back in 1967 the guitarist Bo Anders Persson had already started his Terry Riley-inspired underground band Parson Sound with the bass player Torbjorn Abelli and drummer Thomas Mera Gartz, amongst others. They evolved into International Harvester, then Harvester, and finally striking root as Trad Gras och Sten…
EP1
Stefan Jaworzyn, the legendary underground figure with Whitehouse and Skullflower on his CV, revives his Shock label - home to stacks of releases by Coil, NWW, Ramleh in the '90s - with a discombobulated analog assault on the weirdest dancefloors. Two sides unfurl a barrage of modular bleeps and mescaline flash electronics equally inspired by the linear hypnotism of minimal techno and free jazz aesthetics. A-side 'The Fucker' is driven by a a rugged breakbeat through bracing, atonal maelstrom of…
In Four Parts (Tribute To John Cage)
Equipped with a modular synthesizer, a guitar and electronics Patrick Pulsinger and Christian Fennesz approach the master of the treatment of silence, John Cage. The piece on this album, which was recorded live at Wiener Konzerthaus, was inspired by the underlying attitude of Cage’s String Quartet in Four Parts. Upon invitation by the WIEN MODERN festival the two legendary electronic music protagonists tackled the composer’s early string quartet, took it apart and adapted it for two players, alw…
Mauricio Kagel Ludwig van
Mauricio Kagel’s 1970s film Ludwig Van, a rather critical piece of avant-garde cinema, asked pointed questions about the ways in which later audiences appropriate and interprete Beethoven’s music. Pianist F. Blondy and turntablist DJ LENAR reclaim and reinterpret the soundtrack in this post-modern mashup that includes source material such as Herzog soundtracks, a lecture by Alfred Cortot, samples of string playing and percussion from contemporary improvisation records, and numerous other …
Overloaded Ark
A sequel to last year's eponymous debut as a duo, this new Drag City LP from Espers cellist Helena Espvall and Ghost's Masaki Batoh delves even deeper into traditional and ancient musics, making use of an armoury of instruments that extends beyond 'mildly obscure' (renaissance harp, sho, hurdy gurdy, etc) and enters into the realm of 'are you sure you haven't just made that up?' (auschpfeife, crumhorn, cornamuse, rig and darbuka). On hand to assist in this piece of instrumental archeology is anc…
Vilke
Julian Cope Review on Head Heritage Site: VILKÉ is the particularly fine and sprawling new 2LP by American composer, field recordist and hiker Daniel Menche. Inspired by the wolves of his travels in the N. West and named for the Lithuanian for ‘she-wolf’, VILKÉ presents us with four side-long pieces of haunted and eerie atmosphere music whose dilating post-industrial rhythms, and seemingly ever-decaying, ever-degrading, cicadas-driven post-industrial drone-o-drudge inhabits a parallel half-world…
Rave Slime
Limited edition 12" vinyl. Comes in a 140 micron polished finish PVC sleeve. Contains 2 locked grooves and a palindrome. 45 RPM. A double blow of brutalist composition and raw electronic music. Key words: extreme rave, radical synthesis, computer music for hooligans.
Comme A La Radio
Sensational reissue!!! In 1969, a French chanteuse, an Algerian multi-instrumentalist, and a Chicago jazz quartet undertook an experimental, exploratory, revolutionary musical voyage; a redrawing of musical parameters that, to this day, stands as a glittering beacon, glowing in the dark abyss of 'out' music. Featuring Areski Belkacem and Aart Ensemble of Chicago, Comme a la Radio is the sophomore album in Brigitte Fontaine's prolific career. Four decades on, and Comme à la Radio still sounds…
Smalltown Supersound On Fire
Limited edition vinyl! All new stuff taken from the forthcoming STS releases. As well as some exclusive goodies such as Bjorn Torske's great Sunburned Hand Of The Man remix (a Moondog meets Count Ossie & the Mystic Revelation of Rastafari style remix) as well as Prins Thomas' remix of Tussle. The album also introduces the new sinings; K-X-P from Helsinki, Finland, Mungolian Jet Set from Oslo, Norway, Meanderthals from London/Oslo, and, Drivan, which is Kim Hiorthøy with 3 Swedish girls on vocals…
Sieve
As a duo Tim Catlin and David Brown aka Candlesnuffer come together as 'Helium Clench' and boast long histories in the Melbourne and international avant-garde music world. Both have independently developed a fascination with microtonal sound, in particular through Catlin's construction of harmonic overtone guitars and metal rod instruments tuned in just intonation, and in Brown's case through his explorations using the quartertone bass guitar. 'Sieve', their first duo recording is a stud…
Barn Nova
After five years and 20-plus albums-- most released on their own Child of Microtones label-- MV & EE's 2006 move to Ecstatic Peace began on a high note. "East Mountain Joint", the opening track on Green Blues, is a hypnotic hymn to unscheduled freedom, and it's catchy without losing the duo's loose, do-what-we-feel-like vibe. In fact, it's so entrancing that it's made subsequent work by Matt Valentine, Erika Elder, and their various colleagues seem like insufficient attempts to recapture…
United States of America Triptych (II)
Voice by Pete Simonelli, guitar by David Grubbs, organ by David Maranha, percussion by Andrea Belfi. Selection of texts follows that of Harry Partch's „Eleven Intrusions” Texts by Ella Young, Ella Young and Lao Tzu, Tsurayuki, Willard Motley, George Leite, Giuseppe Ungaretti
5IVE XIMES OF DUST
A classic, highly sought-after and influencial experimental electronic and acoustic tape from 1981, finally released as a deluxe vinyl LP in extended form with an additional LP to round-up this perfect release - Solo-Works and three more 5ive Ximes of Dust instrumentals by the two genius synth-and-cassette-culture-protagonists and musicians of Dada Computer; Mark Philips, who also ran the Tape-Label MAP-Tapes and Robert Lawrence who ran one of the first Cassette-culture Tape-Labels called Quick …
Interface
Awesome, monolithic slab of metal machine music from 1977, France, Paris...Heldon! A prog/early electronic holy grail replete with breathtaking and far-out Heldon's most crystalline work, building to the epic crescendo of the title track. Many fans consider this to be their masterpiece, but more importantly, Interface is a record that will continue to unfold for centuries to come. Richard Pinhas is an artistic iconoclast. A French intellectual as likely to collaborate with MAGMA as the radica…
Gagged In Boonesville
French globe-tourist High Wolf has hand-rolled his way up Mount Fuji, trainspotted every corner of Europe, hitch-hiked across America and Australia, chugged Ganges water, and crouched on all manner of smoke-stained prayer rug since first looping a bongo back in ’09. His apprenticeship in the House of Wah nearly complete, he’s hinted at a potentially seismic shift in the High Wolf third eye doctrine lurking in the near future; perhaps his Away Team exfoliation moment is nigh. Fortunately, …
Concredrones
M.B., also known as Maurizio Bianchi doesn’t need much introduction. In the early 80s he was responsible for a string of compelling electronic music albums in the first wave of ‘industrial music’. After a hiatus of many years he returned in the late 90s and since then has been very active with many new solo releases, but also on the side with collaborations. Here he works with Mario Costa, also known as Sostrah Tinnitus, from Italy, who has had a number of releases on labels as Umbra, Beyond, My…
New Slave Part II: Essence Implosion!
Further to their acclaimed 'New Slaves' LP of spring 2010, Zs offer 'Essence Explosion' backed with new remixes on vinyl from Thee Majesty (Genesis Breyer P-Orridge and Bryin Dall), JG Thirlwell (Foetus) and Cex, plus a download code for mixes by Gabe Andruzzi (The Rapture), Zebrablood (Excepter), Weasel Walter (Flying Luttenbachers), and Ecstatic Sunshine redeemable directly from the label. It's hard not to be wowed by the velocity of their explicit noise skronk on the original version, …