New Arrivals
Home Is The Sun
Invisible Things is the duo of guitarist Mark Shippy (U.S. Maple) and drummer Jim Sykes (Parts & Labor). Well beyond the stereotypical thoughts of a guitar, drum improv/jam session, the drumming is based the study of Sri Lankan percussion and applied to the modern drum kit. This foundation of the drums allows for explorations by the guitar that is tight and sparse one moment and then seamlessly shifted into majestic swirls of reverberation. The album, comprised of 17 tracks, is presented as on…
Surrender to the Fantasy
Stop right there, hands in the air! If you want to know what Magik Markers think is good for you, you'll Surrender to the Fantasy. For this long-desired alpus, they've been working in threes and stuff. Triangles. The hermetic trifecta of knowledge, Christ and the two thieves, Alvin and the Chipmunks, and the original tagline of the Markers' symbol: '3 down, no to go.' Meaning, these three get it and literally no one else needs to, 'cept the record-buying public, tra la la, ha ha ha ha. STTF (nev…
Psychomagia
"Psychomagia" is the new album by the fabulous quartet of Abraxas, the acclaimed tribal rock arrangements for the Book of Angels series. Here they perform a complex new suite of music written expressly for them by Downtown alchemist John Zorn. Drawing inspiration from the magical writings of Giordano Bruno and Alejandro Jodorowski and others, Zorn has written a bold collection of compositions that challenge the musicians to the breaking point. With a program ranging from some of the most …
Guitars From Agadez Vol. 7
In October 2012, the Tamashek community lost one of its most luminous voices when Koudede's life was cut short by a car crash during his trip home to Niger from Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. Koudede was a leading light among the myriad musical groups that have recently proliferated in Niger and Mali to voice the Tuareg struggle against exploitation and to exalt their proud but waning nomadic heritage. His outstanding reputation and corpus of songs garnered the respect of his contemporaries, and his…
Patagonian Field Recordings
Carlos Casas is a filmmaker and visual artist from Barcelona. His work is a cross between documentary film, cinema, and contemporary visual and sound arts. In 2001 he started a trilogy of works dedicated to the most extreme environments on the planet, Patagonia, Aral sea, and Siberia, with a particular interest on how humans relate with the territory they occupy. These tracks comes fro…
Shut In
'Shut In' is a "Beautiful piece of Easy Listening for Cabin Fever courtesy of Kevin Drumm" says Editions Mego, and who are we to argue? It yields some of the inimitable artist's most beautiful, oneiric sounds since his immense 'Imperial Distortion' album for Hospital Productions; in fact, we wouldn't be surprised if we were told it came from those same sessions. One singular piece unfolds for just over 30 minutes across two sides, slowly radiating a sort of soothing harmonic balm with an …
The Bacteria Magnet
Picture Disc in a plastic cover. Limited to 500. 'Cruisin' For A Bruisin' (Bacteria Bitch Mix)', 'Bei Mir Nist Du Schon', 'Thrill Of Romance...? (Burgo Partridge Mix)', 'The Bottom Feeder'.
Inspiration Information + Wings Of Love
Ignored upon its release in 1974 and celebrated upon its reissue in 2001, Shuggie Otis' fourth and last album Inspiration Information exists out of time, a record that was of its time, but didn't belong of it; a record that was idiosyncratic but not necessarily visionary. It was psychedelic soul that was released far too late to be part of any zeitgeist and it was buried at the time. Yet no matter what David Byrne claims on the sticker - he says Shuggie's "trippy R&B jams are equal to Marvin's a…
Body issues
Patricia's warm, fuzzy post-techno-house slots neatly with the Opal Tapes aesthetic on his debut album, 'Body Issues'. Six tracks come off like a boosted 1991 or Huerco S, pushing malleable bass hits below swirling streaks of melody bursting with ferric quality. There's firm parallels to be made here with Anthony Naples, albeit with a noisier bent in 'Hissy Fit', whilst on 'Melting' juicy acid forms over a brittle jack track and the sweet-but-slamming 'Jospehine' and 'Plural' appear like some GH…
Ask the dust
Hailing from Northern California, John Davis is a sound artist, composer and filmmaker who has released music on labels such as Root Strata and Digitalis. With “Ask the Dust,” he offers up a moving suite of compositions made using a plethora of instrumentation including guitar, piano, tape loops, Max/MSP, field recordings and the newest addition to his arsenal, a complex assortment of Blacet synthesizer modules. Davis uses the synth not as the crux of his recordings but as a tool among many in h…
Leave/Trace
Formerly operating under the name of Mites, Shakhnes has been recording and performing in Tel Avi, Israel since 2008. His work has been issued both privately in limited handmade CD-R editions, and internationally though Alamut Records (Jerusalem), Mystery Sea (Belgium), and Copy For Your Records (NYC). Consider 'leave/trace' a graduation ceremony, as Shakhnes steps away from pseudonymity and into the bright lights of his own exceptional music."leave/trace" offers a compelling display of mu…
in Tokyo
Four pieces of computer music. Iancu Dumitrescu \'Hazard and tectonics\' (2009 - 2013), \'Crepuscule I\' (2011-12), \'Early, before all times\' (2010-11). Ana-Maria Avram \'Metalstorm I\' (2012).
Amniocentesi / Envoise 30 05 82
Two unreleased long tracks recorded in 1982. These tracks were originally submitted for the Mail Art Music Project compilation LP. Only one minute of each track was published on the now extremely rare compilation album.Remastered from original master tapes. Cover photo taken in 1982 in Milan. Numbered edition with paste-on cover.
Wake Up Awesome
The second chapter of SStudios (Software Studio Series). SStudios is a new venture in the Software Recording Co.'s expanding catalog that invites artists in the field of electronic music to create collaborative works of quality and vision. Inspired by the historical intersections of live performance and studio post-production, Wake Up Awesome is a modern kind of fusion in technique as well as genre. At its core are three artists highly experienced with both instant and labored composition.…
In Search of the Lost Divine Arc
Deluxe double LP pressed in an edition of 1000 copies, housed in a gatefold sleeve.Acid Mothers Temple\'s In Search of the Lost Divine Arc heads in a completely different direction from 2012\'s Son of a Bitches Brew. Harder, faster, and more riff-rock oriented, this record is here to slay. AMT skews their vibe between Zeppelin and Beefheart, coming out with another classic Acid Mothers ripper in the process
Music for air raids V2.0
LP album, numbered and stamped vinyl edition limited to 250 copies. A different version from ' Music for Air Raids ', recomposed for the vynil format and entirely remastered. Comes above our heads the distant roar of ' Music for air raids v2.0 ' as a prelude to the waves of polyrhythmic drums and unremitting guitars, of powerful and constructive poundings that will penetrate us to the core throughout the album. As this album is a tour de force end-to-end, with raids of drums, persussions and gui…
2nd Movement
Continue reprints of the amazing tapes by Pierpaolo Zoppo aka Mauthausen Orchestra released on Aquilifer Sodality in the early eighties. Tape after tape Mauthausen Orchestra constitute, in a few years, the backbone of what we will know as an alienating and extremist style, made of metal nightmares and sonic torture , often dilated, dissected and extended up to the limit of endurance. 2nd Movement carry us, once again, as real rituals of a civilization without gods, in a pure world of suffering. …
Pictures of sound. One thousand years of educed audio : 980 - 19
Using modern technology, Patrick Feaster is on a mission to resurrect long-vanished voices and sounds--many of which were never intended to be revived. Over the past thousand years, countless images have been created to depict sound in forms that theoretically could be "played" just as though they were modern sound recordings. Now, for the first time in history, this compilation uses innovative digital techniques to convert historic "pictures of sound" dating back as far as the Middle Ag…
Instruments non-electronique
A collection of the earliest recordings of the French sound sculpture musicians and Cristalists known as Structures Sonores Lasry-Baschet. Featuring the first fruits of one of the greatest unisons in experimental French music combining the beguiling haunting sounds of Jacques and Yvonne Lasry and the development of the musical inventions of Bernard and Francois Baschet. Exploring a similar route to that of early Michel Magne recordings (and often likened to “a French Harry Partch”) the emotive m…
Works 1987-1993
Both of these projects hardly need an introduction. Merzbow is since the late 70s the project of Masami Akita working in the field of noise music, having released a few hundred CDs/LPs/cassettes by now. In 1987 Kapotte Muziek was then the solo project of Frans de Waard, after Christian Nijs left the group early '87. De Waard concentrated on working with other musicians, and started trading tapes with a few musicians he was already in contact with, and one of them was Merzbow. The first release w…